Marilyn Booth earned her doctorate in Middle East History and Modern Arabic Literature from St Antony's College, University of Oxford. She has taught at American University in Cairo, the University of Illinois, Brown University, University of Edinburgh as Iraq Chair in Arabic and Islamic Studies, and currently, Magdalen College and the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford as Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Chair. She has published books and essays on
intersections of gender history, Arabic literature, and women's writing in nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Egypt, and is a prize-winning literary translator and co-winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.