Salwa Bakr is the author of four volumes of short stories and four novels. Her work has been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, and Dutch. She is married, has two children, and lives in an outer suburb of Cairo. Denys Johnson-Davies was born in Canada and grew up in Sudan and East Africa. Among his recent translations is Yahya Hakki’s The Lamp of Umm Hashim (AUC Press, 2004). He is the author of Memories in Translation: A Life between the Lines of Arabic Literature (AUC Press, 2006).