FADHIL AL-AZZAWI was born in Kirkuk, Iraq, in 1940. He holds a Ph.D. in cultural journalism from the University of Leipzig and is the author of several novels and collections of poetry. In Iraq, he was a member of the Kirkuk Group of poets of the 1960s generation. He has lived in Germany since 1977. His novel The Last of the Angels was published in English by the American University in Cairo Press in 2007. WILLIAM M. HUTCHINS is the principal translator of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, and has most recently translated Mohammed Khudayyir's Basrayatha, Fadhil al-Azzawi's The Last of the Angels (both AUC Press, 2007), and Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Modern (AUC Press, 2008).