Alaa Al-Aswani is an Egyptian writer, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya. He works as a dentist in El Cairo. His novel, El edificio Yacobián, was published in 2002. It became popular in the Arabic world. It has been translated in more than 20 languages. It has a realistic and direct style, comprehensible to the audience. His last novel is Penguin Random Mouse.