Idlibi, 'Ulfah al- (1921—)

Syrian teacher and author. Name variations: Ulfa al-Idlibi; Ulfat Idlibi. Born in 1921 in Damascus, Syria.

Selected works:

more than 100 stories and four books, including Shamian Stories (1954), Farewell, Damascus (1963), Damascus, Smile of Sorrow (released in the U.S. as Sabriya: A Novel, 1980).

'Ulfah al-Idlibi was born in 1921 and raised in Damascus, Syria, where she trained to be a teacher. When not educating children, she was a prolific writer, one of Syria's first women to devote the bulk of her writing to short stories. Her realistic, moralistic tone reflects al-Idlibi's belief that stories must have a positive social function. The bulk of her tales explore the lives of Arab women, particularly in Damascus.

Her best-known book is Damascus, Smile of Sorrow. Translated by Peter Clark, it was released in paperback in the United States in 1998 by Interlink Publishing Group under the title Sabriya. The novel concerns Syria in the 1920s and its national upheaval against the occupying French. It centers around a journal left behind after the suicide of al-Idlibi's protagonist Sabriya who, writes a Kirkus reviewer (May 1, 1997), "finds that her yearnings for political freedom are no more attainable than are love and marriage—the underground 'war' that claims her husband-to-be proves no crueler than the stern patriarchy that demands her devotion to the needs of her aging parents." Though al-Idlibi's matter-of-fact style would be considered less literary in other cultures, it is the standard in Syrian literature, and the author is highly revered.

Crista Martin , fiction and freelance writer, Boston, Massachusetts