Professor Marina Warner is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015. Since 2016, she has been working on the themes of sanctuary and culture in times of dislocation and diaspora, developing the international Stories in Transit project, which aspires to work with displaced individuals, whatever their status, asking: “What role can imaginary narratives play in contemporary conditions?” and “Can make-believe help make-truth?”

Professor Marina Warner

Egypt, Narrative Tradition and the Arabian Nights

Reading List Description

Professor Marina Warner guides us through a partial list of the books that she has been reading. This reading list originates from books that Warner found enlightening while reading for her book Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Vintage: 2012). This reading list has also informed the “unreliable memoir” of Warner’s childhood in Egypt, which she has been writing for nearly two decades.

Download the reading list here: Egypt, Narrative Tradition and the Arabian Nights.