Hanan al-Shaykh
Hanan al-Shaykh (1945- )
The Women’s Swimming Pool
Lebanese
Contemporary Literature
Hanan al-Shaykh is a critically acclaimed Lebanese writer, who currently lives in London. Growing up in a restricted patriarchal environment created by her father (a devout Shia Muslim) and brother, she started to write to express her freedom. She first attended a traditional Muslim girls’ primary school but later went to the more culturally diverse Ahliyyah School for Girls and the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Shaykh first worked as a journalist in Beirut for a women’s magazine called al-Hasna and later devoted herself to creative writing. Her first book was Intihar Rajul Mayyit [Suicide of a Dead Man] (1970), which is told by a male narrator. Her other works, translated into English, include Only in London (2001), Beirut Blues (1992), and The Story of Zahra (1994). The Locust and the Bird: My Mother’s Story (2009) is about how her mother was forcibly married at age thirteen and later left her family to live with her lover. “The Women’s Swimming Pool” (1982) is a short story revealing some of her ongoing concerns, such as the conflict between modernity and tradition in the Middle East, and women and their desire for freedom in the Arab World.
Consider while reading:
- How are tradition and modernity represented in this story? What are some of the recurrent images? What are some of the notable contrasting images?
- What does the grandmother represent or symbolize in this story?
- How would you interpret the last paragraph of this short story?
Written by Kyounghye Kwon