Khalil Kalfat (born on November 26, 1942) is a Nubian Egyptian

Egyptians

Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...

 intellectual

Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

, leftist activist, literary critic

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

, short story writer, political and economic thinker, linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, lexicographer and translator. He was born in Nubia

Nubia

Nubia is a region along the Nile river, which is located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.There were a number of small Nubian kingdoms throughout the Middle Ages, the last of which collapsed in 1504, when Nubia became divided between Egypt and the Sennar sultanate resulting in the Arabization...

, Aswan

Aswan

Aswan , formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate.It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist centre...

 in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

.

Literary translations

Khalil Kalfat is well known among Arab literature readers and writers for his massive interest in two major Latin American writers, the Brazilian Machado de Assis and Argentine Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

, which is evident in the fact that he translated dozens of shorts stories by both. He also translated the former's leading novel, Dom Casmurro

Dom Casmurro

Dom Casmurro, written by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, was first published in Brazil in 1899. Like The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas and Quincas Borba, both by Machado de Assis, it is a masterpiece of realist literature. It is written as a fictional memoir by a distrusting, jealous husband...

, in addition to a novella, The Psychiatrist. Kalfat's interest in those two writers extended to critical studies written about them in Europe and Latin America, which led to two more books, one containing a translation of Paul B. Dixon's Retired Dreams: Dom Casmurro, Myth and Modernity, the other containing selected essays on Borges.

External links

• Dictionary of Arabic Verb Conjugation
• A century of fantasy, review by Youssef Rakha of his translation of essays written by famous critics on Jorge Luis Borges
  Jorge Luis Borges
  Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
  
  , in Al Ahram Weekly.
• His health state
• His sickness
• His writings