Hamdi Abu Gollayel

Hamdi Abu Golayyel (1967–2023) was an Egyptian storyteller and writer from a settled Bedouin family. His work fuses myth and folklore to tell the tales of marginalised and working-class communities in Egypt. Golayyel’s novels include Thieves in Retirement and The Men Who Swallowed the Sun. He received numerous literary awards, including the Egyptian Ministry of Culture’s Best Short Story Collection, the Arabic Creative Writing Award UAE and the Naguib Mahfouz Prize for Fiction.