Hamdi Abu Golayyel was born in the Fayoum, Egypt, in 1967. He is the author of three short story collections and two novels, the first of which, Thieves in Retirement, was published in English in 2007. He is editor-in-chief of the Popular Studies series, which specializes in folklore research, and writes for the Emirates newspaper al-Ittihad. A Dog with No Tail was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2008. Robin Moger studied Egyptology and Arabic at Oxford, graduating with a first class degree in 2001. For six years he lived in Cairo, where he worked as a journalist for the Cairo Times, taking up translation during a short sojourn in New York. He currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa.