Ahmed Alaidy is a poet and the author of Being Abbas el Abd- a novel that distilled the anger and frustrations of young Egyptians into something tangible, years before the revolution. It is a book about insanity, but it’s also about a young misanthrope who is dealing with life in the Middle East after the Israeli victory in 1967. As he says in the novel, he is a member of the “I’ve-got-nothing-to-lose-generation.” Post-revolution, we’re curious as to what Alaidy will do next.

Jhumpa Lahiri debuted her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. Her first novel, The Namesake was released to wide acclaim in 2003 and subsequently adapted into a fil; and her second short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth was an instant best seller.

Tahmima Anam, a Bangladeshi writer, comes from a literary family. Her father is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star in Bangladesh; her grandfather, Abul Mansur Ahmed was a well-loved satirist and littérateur. It is no wonder she follows the same path and is known for her quick wit and fluid prose style. Anam published her first novel, A Golden Age in 2007, for which she won the Best First Book category of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her second novel, The Good Muslim, was just published this past August to much acclaim.