is a writer and translator. He has translated Ibn al-Jawzī’s Life of Ibn Hanbal and al-Hariri’s Impostures, both for New York University Press. A professor of Near Eastern Languages at UCLA, he is the author of Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma’mun and Al-Mamun (Cambridge University Press, 2000). His current projects are a visual-narrative history of pre-modern Arabic literature and a study of time-travel fiction as a global phenomenon. His other interests include Maltese and Modern Greek language and literature.