About the Author

Khairy Shalaby, born in Kafr al-Shaykh in Egypt's Nile Delta in 1938, has written seventy books, including novels, short stories, historical tales, and critical studies. The Lodging House was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2003. Farouk Abdel Wahab, the Ibn Rushd Professorial Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Chicago, has translated numerous Arabic works of fiction including Hala El Badry's A Certain Woman (AUC Press, 2003) and Gamal al-Ghitani's Zayni Barakat (AUC Press, 2004).