Hawra Al-Nadawi (b. Baghdad 1984) immigrated with her family to Denmark in 1992 where she grew up. She published her first novel in Arabic, Under the Copenhagen Sky, in 2010, which was longlisted for IPAF and in 2012 was a contender for the Arabic Booker Prize.  She followed that with her second novel Qismet, in 2017. Both novels deal with matters of identity and alienation, which are major themes in her works. Critics have pointed out that her works combine a poetic Arabic language, with a Western structure in the novelistic framework, conceivably because of her mixed upbringing and culture. Different mixed cultures were essential in her upbringing and education, as she was homeschooled in Arabic by her Arabic and Kurdish parents, alongside her education in the Danish schools. She studied linguistics and English literature and is fluent in four languages, in addition to three other languages with intermediate proficiency; yet she’s particularly interested in the oriental languages and their literature.