Basma Abdel Aziz

Basma Abdel Aziz (Arabic: بسمة عبد العزيز) (born 1976) is an Egyptian writer, psychiatrist, visual artist and human rights activist, nicknamed 'the rebel'. She is a weekly columnist for Egypt's "al-Shorouk" newspaper. She is the winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award, the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces award, and the Ahmed Bahaa-Eddin Award. She lives in Cairo.
Life and work.
Born in Cairo, Basma Abdel Aziz has a BA in medicine and surgery, an MS in neuropsychiatry, and a diploma in sociology. She works for the General Secretariat of Mental Health in Egypt's Ministry of Health and the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture.
Abdel Aziz gained second place for her short stories in the 2008 Sawiris Cultural Award, and a 2008 award from the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Her sociological examination of police violence in Egypt, "Temptation of Absolute Power", won the Ahmed Bahaa-Eddin Award in 2009.
Her debut novel "Al-Tabuur" ("The Queue") was published by Dar al-Tanweer in 2013, and Melville House published an English translation by Elisabeth Jaquette in 2016.
In 2016 she was named one of "Foreign Policy" 's Leading Global Thinkers. In 2018 she was named by The Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in the list of top influencers of Arabic public opinion.