Muhsin al-Ramli

Muhsin Al-Ramli (born in Iraq, 7 March 1967) is a writer, poet, translator and Hispanist who writes in both Arabic and Spanish. He has lived in Spain since 1995, and his double career makes him a bridge between Arabic and Hispanic literature. He matters for his novels and plays written from Iraq and for his Arabic versions of Spanish classics, among them Cervantes's interludes and Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna.

He graduated in Spanish Philology from the University of Baghdad in 1989, and in 2003 he earned a doctorate from the Autonomous University of Madrid with a thesis on the traces of Islamic culture in Don Quixote. Before leaving Iraq in January 1993 he worked as a journalist and editor in Iraq and Jordan, and as a television scriptwriter. His writing ranges across short stories, drama, novels and poetry, and returns again and again to war, exile, Iraqi memory and the everyday lives of people under authoritarian rule or armed conflict. Since 2004 he has taught at Saint Louis University in Madrid, and since 1997 he has co-founded and co-edited the cultural magazine Alwah.

His legacy runs in both directions. He has translated Arabic poetry and prose into Spanish, including an anthology by Ibrahim Nasralah, and has rendered Spanish works into Arabic. His novel Dates on My Fingers was a finalist for the Arabic Booker Prize in 2010, and several of his texts have appeared in other European languages. His work as a Hispanist and as an Iraqi writer in exile places him at the meeting point of both traditions.