Palestinian Leila al-Atrash is one of the leading novelists and short story writers of the Arab world. She began her career as a journalist and press reporter and, later, as a TV news anchor in Qatar. Her novels include The Sun Rises from the West (1988), An Ordinary Day (1991), Two Nights and the Shadow of a Woman (1997), and The Neighing of Distances (1999), which all probe questions of feminine liberation and selfhood.