Abdullah Ibrahim is an Iraqi academic and critic specialising in narrative and cultural studies. Born in Kirkuk in 1957, he obtained a doctorate in Arabic Literature from the University of Baghdad’s College of Arts in 1991 and has worked as a Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies in a number of Arab universities. He is the former coordinator of the International Qatar Prize and currently works as a cultural consultant in Qatar. He is also a contributor to the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. He has won several prizes, including the Shoman Award for Arab Researchers (1997), the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Critical Studies (2013) and the International King Faisal Prize (2014). He was a judge for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. His publications include: The Encyclopedia of Narrative Prose (2005), Modern Arabic Narration (2013), Narrative Imagining (1990), Historical Imagining (2011), Female Narration (2011), Narration, Identity and Confession (2011), The World of the Middle Ages Through the Eyes of Muslims (2001), Islamic Centrality (2001), Western Centrality (1997),  Arab Culture and Borrowed Authorities (1999), Reception and Cultural Contexts (2000), Prose and Translation (2012).