Latifa al-Zayyat

Latifa al-Zayyat (Arabic: لطيفة الزيات) (8 August 1923 – 10 September 1996) was an Egyptian activist and writer, most famous for her novel The Open Door, which won the inaugural Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. Biography Al Zayyat was born in Dumyat, Egypt, on 8 August 1923. She earned her bachelor's degree in English in 1946 from Cairo University. She joined the communist Iskra group while attending the last grade at the University. She was arrested and detained in Hadra prison in 1949 d...