Egyptian writer Bahaa Taher grateful for accolade

By Raissa Kasolowsky

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Egyptian author Bahaa Taher, winner of the first "Arabic Booker", is grateful for the accolade but laughs as he says that it would have made more of a difference to him when he was younger.

The 73-year-old writer received the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction, supported in part by Britain's Booker Prize Foundation, for his latest work "Sunset Oasis" in Abu Dhabi this year.

The novel, which is based on true events, is set around the time of the failed revolt in 1881 of Colonel Ahmed Orabi against European influence in Egypt, and the British invasion that followed.

The story is centered around a police chief from Cairo who, suspected by the authorities of sympathizing with the revolutionaries, is posted to the remote oasis town of Siwa near the Libyan border.

Taher, whose other works include "My Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery" (1991) and "Love in Exile" (1995), started out working in radio but was fired for his political views in the 1970s under the government of Anwar Sadat. Banned from publication, he later left for Geneva, where he worked as a translator for the United Nations.

Q: You've said the desert is a place where some people find themselves while others walk into disaster - like the protagonist in your latest novel. What kind of person are you?

A: "I consider the desert a heaven, a garden of God. I find myself in the desert. I have more time to think, to meditate, to be alone."

Q: It's been said that "Sunset Oasis" is your second testimony to Arab politics.