Luwīs ʿAwaḍ (1915-90) was an Egyptian scholar, writer, and essayist. He was born on 5 January 1915 to a middle-class Coptic family in Upper Egypt. He finished a degree in English literature at Cairo University in 1933. In 1937, he went to Cambridge University to obtain a Ph.D., but three years later he had to return to Egypt before completing the programme, because of the outbreak of the Second World War. It was not until 1953 that he obtained his doctorate from Princeton University. From 1940 to