Quick Facts
Biography
Rana Kabbani (born 1958) is a Syrian cultural historian, writer, poet, and broadcaster who lives in London. Most famous for her works Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of the Orient (1994) and A Letter to Christendom (1989), she has also edited and translated works in Arabic and English. More recently, she has been a contributor to The Guardian and The Independent, as well as to various television and radio programs, speaking out against islamophobia.
Education and Personal Life
Born in 1958 in Damascus, Kabbani was partially raised by her maternal grandmother. She spent of most of her childhood split between New York City and Jakarta as being the daughter of the Syrian ambassador Sabah Qabbani. She attended the University of Beirut and Jesus College, Cambridge. As the niece of the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, Kabbani had literature and activism in her blood from a young age. In the way that Nizar's feminism had been inspired by the suicide of his sister (she refused to go along with an arranged marriage), Kabbani's role as a progressive voice against imperialism was inspired by her experiences with growing anti-Muslim sentiment.
She married Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish. They had no children together and divorced in the 1980s. Yet, Kabbani remarried some time later to British journalist Patrick Seale, and they had two children named Alexander and Yasmine. Yet, they became estranged, and Kabbani stated her distaste of Seale in a tweet while he lay on his deathbed in 2014, saying: “Last of the Orientalists, Patrick Seale knew no Arabic, was racist and preferred Arab dictators to their people.”
Writing career
She began her writing career in Paris as an art critic, later moving to London to work as a publisher's editor. However, in 1986, she launched into a full-time writing career of her own, pursuing topics closer to her heart.
Her first book, Europe's Myths of the Orient: Devise and Rule, was published in 1986. In it, she evaluated orientalist perspectives and narratives, specifically focusing on erotic stereotypes and sexualization of the "exotic" in literature and painting. Constructed as a literature review with elements of critique sprinkled throughout, she aims to challenge the work of traditional influential writers like Antoine Galland, Charles Montagu Doughty, and Richard Burton. This book was later republished in 1994 as Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of the Orient.
After the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, there was a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment, which prompted Kabbani to write A Letter to Christendom in 1989.
Her other works include her translations from the Arabic of Mahmoud Darweesh's Sand and Other Poems (1986) and her editorship of The Passionate Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt (1987).
Kabbani has since transitioned from writing books to engaging through news publications and online. She wrote for the Islamic Monthly and published articles for The Independent and The Guardian in 2011, stating her opinions on East-West relations and Syrian politics in articles such as Can Syrians Dare to Hope? She is also extremely active on Twitter, which has led her to be a more controversial figure in the public space, as some see her radical stance and brash language as a form of hate speech, while others simply see her as an opinionated woman highlighting political and social issues.