Raja Alem

Raja Alem is a Saudi novelist born in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in 1975, who currently resides in Paris. She began her writing career publishing work in the cultural supplement of the Riyadh newspaper and formerly wrote experimental plays for the theatre. Her most notable novels include The Silk Road (1995), The Holy Man, Wahadanah (1998), Khatem (2007), The Doves’ Necklace (2010) and Sarab (2018), which was published in English and German. She has won a number of prizes for her writing including the Arabic Women’s Creative Writing Prize in 2005, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of UNESCO; and the Lebanese Literary Club Prize in 2008. Her novel The Doves’ Necklace (2010) won IPAF in 2011 and was translated into five languages.