Moon and Henna Tree

Ahmed Toufiq is the Minister of Religious Affairs and Endowments for Morocco. Trained as both a historian and philologist, he is the author of works on pre-modern Moroccan history and the editor of significant source texts in religion and history. Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors: A Historical Novel from Morocco was the first of his novels to be translated into English.

Roger Allen is Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He has translated several Arabic novels into English, including Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors, and is the author of The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction.

Roger Allen retired in 2011 from his position as the Sascha Jane Patterson Harvie Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served for forty-three years as Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature. He is the author and translator of numerous publications on Arabic literature, modern fiction and drama, and language pedagogy.