Abdelwahab Meddeb

was born in Tunisia in 1946. He is a prolific writer, poet, novelist and translator (Arabic-French). He moved to Paris as a young man, studying art history and literature. He is now Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and editor of the international French-language literary journal Dédale, He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and guest lecturer at universities and research centres in Geneva and Florence. He has published more than 12 books in French. In 2002 his book La Maladie de l’islam was published (Seuil), and in English translation in 2003 under the title, Malady of Islam (Basic Books, New York). It has since been translated into Arabic, Bosnian, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. He curated an exhibition in Barcelona’s Centre for Contemporary Culture, “West by East”, about how Westerners, Europeans in particular, have been seen, past and present, by the Islamic East (26 May to 25 September 2005).