AWNY Ahmad
Country: Egypt
Year of Birth: 1988
Biography
Ahmed Awny, born in 1988, is an Egyptian writer, literary editor, and publisher based in Berlin, where he is the creative director of Khan Aljanoub, a publishing house and bookstore. He studied mechanical engineering before turning to creative writing at the American University in Cairo and screenwriting at the Meditalents lab in Morocco. His work explores social movements, subcultures, Political propaganda, and masculinity.
His first book, the short story collection قلق مزمن (Chronic Anxiety, Dar Sharqiyat, 2010), was followed by his debut novel, جوائز للأبطال (Some Achieve Greatness, Al Mahrousa, 2019), which won the Sawiris Cultural Award for best novel by an emerging writer and was named one of Al Jazeera’s ten best Arabic books of 2019. The novel has since appeared in Spanish as Premios para Héro (Textofilia, Mexico), and an English edition, translated by Adam Talib, is forthcoming from Foundry in 2027.
His short fiction has been published in English, German, and Arabic, including in AGNI, Rusted Radishes, The Markaz Review, and, in a German translation by Hartmut Fähndrich, Weiter Schreiben.
His latest novel, All the Blows, was written with the support of a residency at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris, a production grant from Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy, and Berlin’s senate writers’ grant.
Titles
Some achieve greatness | Jawaez lil abtal (2019)
In the press
“The novel one of its “Top 10 Books of 2019 from the Arab World” — Aljazeera news
“Some Achieve Greatness, Ahmad Awny’s first novel, was the surprise of the year by far. It does the novel a disservice to say it is just a novel about the revolution. It’s much more than that. […] The most important thing about the novel for me is that it’s a fun book, even though it picks over old wounds, or maybe that’s what made it a fun book: it picks over old wounds cleverly and earnestly. As soon as I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down...” — Belal Fadl, Al-araby news
Rights sold
Textofilia (Spanish, Mexico, 2024)
Foundry Editions (English UK, forthcoming)
[Updated September 2026]
