Ashraf El-Ashmawi

Ashraf El-Ashmawi is an Egyptian judge, novelist, and legal scholar born in 1966. He has served in the public prosecutor’s office and as a judge at the Egyptian Court of Appeal, and later worked as a legal advisor to the Supreme Council of Antiquities. El-Ashmawi has written more than ten critically acclaimed novels, including “Toya” (longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013), “The Barman”, “The Shepherd’s Hounds”, and “The Lady of Zamalek”, as well as a non-fiction book on the theft and smuggling of Egyptian antiquities. His works have won several awards such as Best Novel at the Cairo International Book Fair and Best Historical Novel at the Bahrain Cultural Forum, and many of his books have been translated into multiple languages.