Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblad, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm pleased and honored to have as my guest, Adaf Suif.

We are taping in Santa Fe in the library at the Lannin Foundation.

Adaf Suif, a Linen Award winner, has given a reading last night.

And we are talking about her several novels.

Most recently, the Map of Love, available from vintage, and in the eye of the sun also available from

vintage. Adaf Suif was born in Cairo and she lives now in London. I wanted to begin because this is the

inevitable beginning with you in the question of how it comes to be that you write in English rather than your native Arabic.

Hi, Michael, it's good to be here.

It's nice to see you.

I think with the question of the language I write in, I was, I was, the language I first read in was English. So, um, it was an accident. We, we happened to be in England from when I was four till I was seven. My mom was studying, and we, my father and I went with her.

And, in fact, I forgot, I lost my Arabic and went to school in England and learned to read at the age of five.

And so read English to begin with.

And when we went home to Cairo, I re-learned

Arabic and, in fact, went to an Arabic school and so on. But I was already hooked on on the

material that you could read in English. And with my mother, my mother taught English literature at Cairo University.

And so I grew up surrounded by her library.

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