Youssef Ziedan

Youssef Ziedan is an Egyptian novelist, born in 1958. He is a scholar specialising in Arabic and Islamic studies and author of more than sixty books. His works have won numerous international prizes. His most famous novel, Azazeel (2008) won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and was translated into 16 languages. Its English edition won the 2012 Anobii First Book Award, given by the Edinburgh Festival for the best novel translated for the first time into English, and the 2013 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Literary Translation. His novels include: The Shadow of the Serpent (2008), Azazeel (2008), The Nabatean (2010), IPAF-longlisted in 2012, Muhal (2012), Guantanamo (2014), Nur (2016) and Fardeqan – the Detention of the Great Sheikh (2018), which reached the 2020 IPAF shortlist and was translated into Farsi.