Persa Koumoutsi (panel discussion 4) is a novelist and literary translator. She was born in Cairo, and moved to Greece following her studies in English and Arabic literature at the Egyptian University of Cairo. She has been working as a literary translator since 1992 and has translated more than 40 titles from Arabic into Greek, including 14 novels by the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz.
Ms. Koumoutsi has received numerous awards, including the International Cavafy Prize for translation (2001), honorary medals from the Egyptian Ministry of Education (2008 and 2010), a special honorary award from Al Azhar University’s school of languages (2015), and the first Translation Guild Award for the Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry (2017).
She has also published eight books, including “West of the Nile,” “In the streets of Cairo,” “A Walk With Naguib Mahfouz,” and “Alexandrian Voices,” all of which have been translated into Arabic. In 2019, with the organization CulturePolis, she co-created and now directs the Centre of Greek and Arabic Literature and Culture.
In 2021 she was awarded the "Achievement Award" for Translation and International Understanding by the Sheikh Hamad International Organization.