Authors

Ahmad Amin, (1954-1886) was an Egyptian historian and writer. He wrote a series of books on the history of the Islamic civilization (1928–1953), a famous autobiography, as well as an important dictionary of Egyptian folklore (1953).

Malek Bennabi was an Algerian writer and philosopher, who wrote about human society, particularly Muslim society with a focus on the reasons behind the fall of Muslim civilization. According to Malek Bennabi, the lack of new ideas in Islamic thought emerged what he coined civilizational bankruptcy. He argued that in order to recover its former magnificence, Islamic society had to become an environment in which individuals felt empowered. In order to satisfy his spiritual and material needs, a Muslim needed to feel that his industry and creativity would find reward.

Abdel-Wahab El-Messiri was an Egyptian scholar, author and general coordinator of the opposition organization Kefaya.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic (see Logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".

Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Francis of Assisi, Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Mustafa Kamal Mahmoud Hussein commonly known as Mustafa Mahmoud was an Egyptian doctor, philosopher, and author. Mustafa was born in Shibin el-Kom, Monufia province, Egypt. He was trained as a doctor, but later chose a career as a journalist and author, traveling and writing on many subjects. He wrote 89 books on science, philosophy, religion, politics, and society as well as plays, tales, and travelogues.

Mostafa Saadeq Al-Rafe'ie (1 January 1880 – May 1937) was an Egyptian poet, born in Egypt in Qalyubiyya, Egypt.

His maternal grandfather was Sheikh Eltoukhy (originally from Toukh, a famous Egyptian city) but was born in Aleppo and managed his business between The Levant and Egypt.

Mostafa Saadeq Al-Rafe'ie became deaf at the age of thirty.

Despite his hearing disability and the fact that he was self-taught, he became one of the most famous Arab poets of the early twentieth century. He composed the words of the Egyptian national anthem Eslami ya Misr, adopted between 1923 and 1936. The words of the Tunisian national anthem are largely the work of Al-Rafe'ie.

Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad was an Egyptian journalist, poet and literary critic, and member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo. More precisely, because "his writings cover a broad spectrum, including poetry, criticism, Islamology, history, philosophy, politics, biography, science, and Arabic literature", he is perceived to be a polymath.

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations, like those depicted in his writing.

Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mahfouz is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers in the Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He is the only Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He published 35 novels, over 350 short stories, 26 screenplays, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and seven plays over a 70-year career, from the 1930s until 2004. All of his novels take place in Egypt, and always mentions the lane, which equals the world. His most famous works include The Cairo Trilogy and Children of Gebelawi. Many of Mahfouz's works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films; no Arab writer exceeds Mahfouz in number of works that have been adapted for cinema and television. While Mahfouz's literature is classified as realist literature, existential themes appear in it.

Susan Horowitz Cain (born 1968) is an American writer and lecturer.

She is the author of the 2012 non-fiction book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which argues that modern Western culture misunderstands and undervalues the traits and capabilities of introverted people. In 2015, she co-founded Quiet Revolution, a mission-based company with initiatives in the areas of children (parenting and education), lifestyle, and the workplace. Her 2016 follow-on book, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, focused on introverted children and teens, the book also being directed to their educators and parents.

Her book Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (2022) focused on accepting feelings of sorrow and longing as inspiration to experience sublime emotions—such as beauty and wonder and transcendence—to counterbalance the "normative sunshine" of society's pressure to constantly be positive.

Taha Hussein was one of the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers and intellectuals, and a figurehead for the Egyptian Renaissance and the modernist movement in the Middle East and North Africa. His sobriquet was "The Dean of Arabic Literature" . He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-one times.