Creative Writing Past Faculty

Alaa Al Aswany

Alaa Al Aswany headshot

Photo by Abdallah Hassan

About

Alaa Al Aswany is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Yacoubian Building, the best-selling novel in the Arab world for more than five years, with more than a million copies sold globally; Chicago, named by Newsday as the best translated novel of 2006; and, most recently, The Automobile Club of Egypt. His next novel, The Republic of False Truths, will be published in the US by Knopf in April 2021 and has been published in Europe to great acclaim. His nonfiction work includes The Dictatorship Syndrome (2019), Democracy is the Answer (2015), and On the State of Egypt (2011). His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and published in more than one hundred countries. He has received several international awards, including the Grinzane Cavour Prize, the Bruno Kreisky Award, the Grinzani Cavour Award, the Cavafy Award for Literary Talent, and in 2016 he was appointed a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.