`Aisha is Ahfaf Soueif's first book and to say it is promising is to understate the case: it is highly accomplished. Aisha is further evidence of the fact that some of the most confident British fiction is being written by people of mixed cultures' * Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times *
`There is lively, lucid writing here, vivid description and sharply observed dialogue' * Isabel Raphael, The Times *
`A highly unusual and richly impressive first novel ... The author weaves a circle round us thrice with the touch of a born sorceress. One awaits her next with great expectations' * Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian *
`The writing is deft and pattient, the understanding of this trickiest of narrative forms is sure and rarely off-target' * Edward Said, London Review of Books *

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of Sandpiper, In the Eye of the Sun and the bestselling novel The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. She has translated I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti from Arabic into English. She also is a journalist and commentator and her work is syndicated throughout the world.