Abdallah al-Nasser was born in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, in 1953 and studied Arabic Literature at al-Imam University, Riyadh. He spent some years in Houston, Texas as editor of the educational magazine Al-Mubtaath and in Algiers as cultural attaché, and is at present cultural attaché in London and editor of Al-Thaqafiyah, a quarterly publication concerned with Arabic culture. His first collection of short stories, The Mirage (1998), dealt especially with the experience of confronting an unbalanced model of modernization. An uncomplicated yet sophisticated writer, with a vein of satire and humor, he is deeply concerned with the inevitable collision between desert and city.