Haitham Hussein is a Kurdish-Syrian novelist born in Amouda in 1978 and now lives in London. He is a member of the Authors Society of Great Britain and a member of the Scottish PEN. He contributes to Arabic newspapers and is the founder of alriwaya.net, is the only website specializing in the contemporary Arabic fiction. His novel “Hostages of Sin” (2009, Damascus) was translated into Czech and published in 2016. It was also adapted into a play in Czech. Translated excerpts of “Hostages of Sin” appeared in an issue of the English-language magazine Banipal devoted to Syrian literature. Among Hussein’s other novels, all published in Arabic, are “Aram: The Descendent of Unspoken Pains” (2006, Damascus); “Needle of Horror” (2013, Beirut and Algeria. It was translated into French, Paris 2020, by L’Armattan) and “A Weed in Paradise” (2017, Tunisia). He has published works of literary criticism: “The Novel between Mining and Puzzling” (Aleppo, 2011); “The Novel and the Life” (2013, UAE); “The Novelist Beats the Drums of War” (2014, Dubai); “The Fictional Character” (2015, UAE); “Why should You be a Novelist” (2020, Jordan) and edited “The Story of the First Novel by 30 Arab Novelists” (2017, Dubai)