Hanan al-Shaykh (born 1943) is a Lebanese novelist from the town of Arnoun in Jabal Amel (southern Lebanon).
She completed her studies in Cairo and lived in many countries, from Beirut to Cairo, Saudi Arabia, and London. She wrote her first novel at the age of nineteen. She worked for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar and the Lebanese magazine Al-Hasnaa for a time. Her novels have been translated into twenty-one languages.