Ibrahim al-Koni was born in the northwest of the Sahara Desert in Libya in 1948 and learned to read and write Arabic at the age of twelve. He has been hailed a magical realist, a Sufi fabulist, and a poetic novelist, and his more than eighty books contain mythological elements, spiritual quests, and existential questions. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages and include Gold Dust, The Animist, The New Oasis, The Puppet, and many more. Among the many literary prizes to his name, he has been awarded the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. He currently lives in Spain.
Nancy Roberts is an award-winning translator of a number of Arabic novels including Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour, for which she received a commendation in the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Translation, and Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses, The Lanterns of the King of Galilee, and Gaza Weddings, for which she was awarded the 2018 Sheikh Hamad Prize for Translation and International Understanding. She lives in Wheaton, Illinois.