Mohammed Hasan Alwan

was born in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia in 1979. He has four novels (Banipal 26 includes a review of Sophia) and a collection of short stories, two of which, "Blonde Grass" and 'Statistics" were commissioned for Banipal 30, translated by Ali Azeriah.

He was selected as one of the 39 best Arab authors under the age of 40 by the 2009-2010 Beirut39 project of the Hay Festival and Beirut World Book Capital, (for an interview with him click here ) and later joined the first writers' workshop (nadwa) of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

His work has been published in the Beirut39 Anthology, edited by Banipal's editor Samuel Shimon, and in Emerging Arab Voices – 1, the collection of creative writing from the IPAF workshop, edited by IPAF trustee Peter Clark. 

Check out Mohammed's own website for the two short stories published in Banipal 30, and click here to read the review of his novel Sophia.

His novel Al-Qundus (The Beaver), was shortlisted for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It was earlier excerpted in Banipal 44, after being the subject of a literary translation workshop at the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), led by Paul Starkey.