The aim of this paper is to investigate the factors behind the translation and popularity in Britain, Europe and even Australia of the books of the Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh. In carrying out this task the author will first refer to an established argument which relates the interest in al-Shaykh’s fiction perhaps too extensively to the western interest in issues relating to Arab women, to the Orientalist’s interest in what lies ’behind the veil’ (Baloushi 1998). The authors argument will then go on to explore the ways in which translations of al-Shaykh’s work offer something more than the mere re-iteration of a ’clash of civilizations’. Various analyses of her work have revealed other points of interest, of which the author will concentrate on the feminist perspective in her oeuvre.