Saïd Khatibi is a novelist, travel writer, translator, and cultural journalist, born in 1984 in Bou Saâda, Algeria. He writes in Arabic and French and translates between both. He has a BA in French Literature from the University of Algiers and an MA in Cultural Studies from the Sorbonne. Sarajevo Firewood is his third novel in Arabic (and first in English translation), and was shortlisted for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His other novels are Kitab al-Khataya (Book of Errors), Editions ANEP, 2013, and Forty Years Waiting for Isabelle, 2016, about the real-life Swiss traveler Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904), for which he won the 2017 Katara Award for the Novel. He has a travel book about the Balkans, The Inflamed Gardens of the East, 2015, and has written extensively on raï music, including a book (Wedding Fire, 2010) that tells its story. He lives in Slovenia.
Amara Lakhous was born in Algeria in 1970. He moved to Italy in 1995. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers and another in Humanities from the University of Rome, La Sapienza where he completed a Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Living Islam as a Minority.” He is the author of five novels, three of which were written in both Arabic and Italian. His best known works are the much acclaimed Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008), Divorce Islamic Style (2012), A Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet (2014), and The Prank of the Good Little Virgin in Via Ormea (2016). His latest novel in Arabic, Tir al-lil (The Night Bird), was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, 2021. His novels have been translated from Italian into many languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Danish and Persian. Lakhous has been awarded, among others, the Flaiano Prize in Italy in 2006 and the Algerians Booksellers Prize in 2008. Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio has been adapted into a movie by the Italian director Isotta Toso in 2010 and many theater productions. It was chosen for the 2014 New Student Reading Project at Cornell University. Lakhous moved to New York City in August of 2014 and is joining the Department of Italian Studies at Yale.
Alexander Elinson is Associate Professor of Arabic and Head of the Arabic Program Hunter College of the City University of New York. In addition to his book Looking back at al-Andalus: the poetics of loss and nostalgia in medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature, he has written extensively on classical Arabic and Hebrew poetry and prose, as well as on contemporary language politics and ideology, prison narratives, and oral and written culture in Morocco. He has translated two novels by Youssef Fadel: A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me and A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me, the latter of which was shortlisted for the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. He has also translated Hot Maroc by Yassin Adnan which was shortlisted for the 2022 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize. His translation of Khadija Marouazi`s prison novel History of Ash will be published this summer. He is currently translating Amara Lakhous`s latest novel, The Night Bird, and Saïd Khatibi's The End of the Sahara.