Fatema Mernissi

Fez (Morocco), 1940

Doctor of Sociology, essayist, and university professor (at the Institut Universitaire de Recherche Scientifique of Mohamed V University in Rabat). She is an advisor to several international organizations such as UNESCO, ILO, etc., and her specialty is the study of women in Islam and the impact of new technologies on the Islamic world. She is currently involved in the project ‘Sinergie Civique,’ where she leads workshops for small NGOs focused on human rights through the improvement of communication skills.

In 2003, she received the PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD for Literature, alongside Susan Sontag. In 2004, she received the ERASMUS AWARD. She gives lectures worldwide and has been curator of the exhibition Women in the Arab World, held at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona.

She has published a novel, Sueños en el umbral (El Aleph, 1996; Columna, 1998), which has been translated into 23 languages, and the film rights have been sold.

Her other works are essays, all translated into major languages:

Marruecos a través de sus mujeres, Ediciones del Oriente, 1990

El harén político, Ediciones del Oriente, 1992

El poder olvidado: las mujeres ante un Islam en cambio, Icaria, 1995

Las sultanas olvidadas, El Aleph, 1997

Miedo a la modernidad: islam y democracia, Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo, 1992

El harén en occidente, Espasa Calpe, 2001; paperback 2006

El hilo de Penélope, Ediciones Lumen, 2005

Un libro para la paz, El Aleph, 2004