Tarek Eltayeb was born in Cairo in 1959, the son of Sudanese parents. Since 1984 he has lived in Austria, where he is currently a professor at the International Management Center of the University of Applied Sciences at Krems. He is the author of three novels as well as short stories and poetry.Kareem James Palmer-Zeid is the translator of Tarek Eltayeb’s The Palm House (AUC Press, 2011). He was runner-up in the 2010 Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for his translation of Cities without Palms.