Leila Aboulela was born in 1964 in Cairo, to an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father. She moved to Sudan at the age of six weeks and lived in Khartoum continuously until 1987.  Leila learnt English at the Khartoum American School and at the Sisters’ School, a private Catholic High school.  She graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Khartoum specializing in Statistics.  She then travelled to Britain where she was awarded a M.Sc. and an MPhil in Statistics from the London School of Economics.  In 1990 Leila moved to Scotland with her husband and children. She started writing in 1992 while working as a lecturer in Aberdeen College and later as a Research Assistant in Aberdeen University. From 2000, Leila and her family lived in Jakarta, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha before moving back, in 2012, to Aberdeen.