For Atiya, translating Ramza is clearly a labor of love, a journey back to her own Egyptian childhood. Starting from Egyptian writer Out el Kouloub's (1892-1968) stark French original, Atiya has added not only the odd adjective but also detailed descriptions from her own childhood memories to create, as she says in her introduction, "an ornamented translation." But the tender evocation of the past should not disguise the fact that this is a feminist novel. Written in 1958 as one of five novels portraying Egyptian women from varying social classes, it depicts Ramza, the daughter of a Serbian slave and a wealthy Egyptian.