Tawfiq Al-Hakim

Playwright, novelist and essayist, Tawfiq Al-Hakim was born in 1898 in Alexandria, Egypt to an Egyptian landowning father and an aristocratic Turkish mother. He studied law in Cairo, graduating in 1925, and then continued his studies in Paris. Following his return from France, he worked as a deputy prosecutor in Alexandria, combining his legal work with writing. He also worked as a journalist at Akhbar al-Yom newspaper, and as a manager of the Egyptian National Library. In 1956 the then Egyptian president Nasir appointed Hakim to the Supreme Council for the Arts and he later represented Egypt at the UNESCO in Paris. Although he wrote novels, poems and essays, he is best remembered as a prolific playwright who played a key role in the development of Arabic drama. He died in 1987.