Charbel Kattan is a Lebanese writer, born in Maghdouche, Southern Lebanon, in 1970. He finished his schooling in Lebanon before moving to South Africa in 1990, where he continued higher education and obtained a Bachelor of Science in Computing. He currently lives and works in Johannesburg and is married with two children. He has been a member of a number of emigration committees and written articles about the experience of exile and its challenges. Suitcases of Memory (2010), his first novel, was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2012.