Taleb Alrefai was born in Kuwait in 1958 and started writing short stories as an engineering student at the University of Kuwait in the mid-1970s, publishing in local newspapers. His first collection, (Live Long Abu 'Ujjaj) came out in 1992. He worked for Kuwait's National Council for Culture, Art, and Literature, and edited their monthly arts review. His first novel was (Shadow of the Sun), about migrant Egyptian workers in Kuwait. The Arabic original of The Mariner (Al-Najdi) was longlisted for the 2018 IPAF Prize. It also has French, Turkish and Chinese editions. Russell Harris holds an MA in Oriental Studies from Balliol College, Oxford, and is an established translator of literary works from French and Arabic. He is a contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography, The Routledge Encyclopedia of 19th Century Photography, The Oxford Companion to Food and The Encyclopaedia Islamica. He has written many articles on Middle Eastern art for various international journals and magazines. His translations include works by Naguib Mahfouz, Alaa al-Aswany and Tawfiq al-Hakim. He currently works as an editor at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London.