The translator Issa J. Boullata is a literary critic and scholar, who also writes fiction. Professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, he has published several books, including Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (1990) and a novel in Arabic, Homecoming to Jerusalem (1998), in addition to numerous studies on Arabic literature, short stories in English, and translations of works by Ahmad Amin, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Mohamed Berrada, Ghada Samman, Emily Nasrallah, and others. Among his latest books are: Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur'an, ed., (2000) and, in Arabic, A Window on Modernism: Studies in the Works of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (2002). He was editor of the following journals: Al-Arabiyya (1977-82) and The Muslim World with W. Bijlefeld (1980-90), and guest-editor of Oral Tradition: Arabic Oral Traditions (1989) and Mundus Arabicus (1992).
