Ashraf El-Ashmawi

Egyptian judge and novelist, born in 1966. He has published eleven novels and a documentary book about the smuggling and theft of Egyptian antiquities over two hundred years. His first novel was published in 2010, and in 2012 his second novel, Toya, was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The Barman and the Orfanelli Lounge novel also won the best Arabic Novel Award from the Egyptian General Book Authority at the Cairo International Book Fair in 2014 and 2021, and the novel The Shepherd’s Dogs won the Best historical novel from the Bahrain International Cultural Forum in 2019. He also won the Katara Cultural Prize for the year 2023 in its last session with his novel The Secret Society of Citizens. The English version of his novel The House of the Coptic Woman was chosen from Brittle Paper Foundation as one of the most influential and expressive novels in African literature for the current year.