On the State of Egypt: What Made the Revolution Inevitable

Alaa Al Aswany is the author of The Yacoubian Building, which was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006 and was the bestselling novel in the Arab world for more than five years; Chicago, named by Newsday as the best translated novel of 2006; The Automobile Club of Egypt; and the story collection Friendly Fire. He has received numerous awards internationally, including the Bashrahil Prize for the Arabic novel, the Kavafis Award from Greece and the Premio Grinzane Cavour from Italy. He was recently named by the London Times as one of the 50 best authors to have been translated into English over the last 50 years.

Jonathan Wright is a British journalist and translator. He joined Reuters news agency in 1980 and was based in the Middle East for three decades in his capacity as a correspondent. He has been translating books from the Arabic since 2008, beginning with Taxi by Khaled al-Khamissi. His translations have since won the 2013 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.