Radwa Ashour, a highly acclaimed Egyptian writer and scholar, is the author of more than fifteen books of fiction, memoir, and criticism; among them, Siraaj and Granada have been published in English. She is a recipient of the Constantine Cavafy Prize for Literature. She lives in Cairo, where she teaches literature at Ain Shams University, Cairo. Barbara Romaine has been teaching Arabic for nearly two decades, currently at Villanova University. Her other translations include Bahaa Taher’s novel Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery and Radwa Ashour’s Siraaj.