The Modern Novel

Biography

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was born in1919 in Adana in French-occupied Cilicia, now part of Turkey. His father fought for the Ottomans in World War 1. The family survived the Sayfo genocide and migrated to Bethlehem in the 1920s. The family later moved to Jerusalem. He graduated in 1937 from the Government Arab College. He won a scholarship to study English at the University College of the South West in Exeter. He remained in England and continued his studies at Cambridge University , because of the dangers of returning to Palestine by boat during World War II. At Cambridge, he learned English and obtained a B.A. He returned to Jerusalem in 1943, where he taught English. He also wrote articles for various magazines. After the Nakba in 1948, the family moved to Baghdad. He worked for a year in Damascus. He received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, to study English literature and literary criticism at Harvard University. He wrote his first novel and translated it into Arabic.

He returned to Baghdad and worked in public relations. He went on to write novels, stories, memoirs, poetry and non-fiction as well as translating numerous English works into Arabic, including Shakespeare, Wilde and Faulkner. He died in 1994.

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Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
5 Books: Remembering Jabra Ibrahim Jabra