Ibrahim Aslan (1937-2012) was born in Tanta in the Nile Delta. He published his first collection of short stories, Buhayrat al-misa' ('Evening Lake'), in 1971. His first novel Malik al-hazin ('The Heron,' 1983) was adapted into the successful film Kit Kat.

ELLIOTT COLLA teaches comparative literature at Brown University. His book Conflicted Antiquities is a study of the figures of Egyptian antiquities in European travel writing, museum discourses, and modern Egyptian literature.