Alaa Al Aswany was born in Cairo in 1957. A dentist by profession, he was one of the founding members of the Egyptian pro-democracy movement Kifaya and actively participated in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. His debut novel, The Yacoubian Building (Feltrinelli, 2006), caused a sensation for the issues it addressed and has since become the best-selling novel in the Arab world. The book was adapted into a film screened at the Rome Film Festival in 2006. Feltrinelli has also published Chicago (2008), If I Were Not Egyptian (2009), The Egyptian Revolution (2011), The Automobile Club of Egypt (2014), and I Ran Towards the Nile (2018).