Gamal El Ghitani HIS LIFE HIS WORKS AWARDS Gamal Ahmed El Ghitani Ali , born on the ninth of May 1945 in Sohag in Upper Egypt. Current chief editor of Akhbar El Adb weekly newspaper , and the author of some of the greatest novels published in the modern days .We'll. start with his upbringing and the effect it had on him . He grew up in old Cairo in a poor family , his father worked in the Ministry of Agriculture . He has two brothers and a sister , the elder brother is an engineer in the army , his sister graduated form Law School and the third graduated from the Faculty of Literature . He graduated from a school the taught arts and handcrafts in 1962 , he studied the art of making oriental carpets . He worked as a carpet designer form 1963 till 1965 then he was promoted to become an administrator in the carpet factory . He was locked up in a political prison in the year 1966 with a group of writers for political reasons , he was released in the year 1967 . He then worked as a secretary for an institute in Khan El Khalili bazaar . In 1969 he went on to work in Akhbar El Yom news agency . He started as a reporter in the field of battle form 1969 till 1974 , then he worked in the press review department and then he was promoted to become chief of the literature department in 1985 and a daily writer and an advisor to Akhbar El Yom news agency . Then he became the chief editor of Akhbar El Adb weekly newspaper in 1992 first published on the 18th of July 1993 . He has been married since 1976 and has a son and daughter .
Gamal El Ghitani can be considered as a self made man , he started reading and writing at an early age . He wrote his first short novel in 1959 with the title "Nehait El Sakeer" "The end of the Drunk " , his first short novel was published in 1963 in Aladeeb Lebanese magazine and in that same month he wrote a study on the book "The Soul Story" by Leon Adel . In the period from July 1963 till March 1969 he had published over fifty short stories in several magazines . In March 1969 he published his first series called "The diary of a youth that lived a thousand years ago " made of only five short stories . Many of his works were translated to several languages for instance "El Zeini Barakat " which was translated to French , Swedish , English , Dutch , Norwegian , German , Russian , Polish and Italian to reach the whole world .
Over his long courier he has won many prizes some of which are : The national accolade for science and literature of the first degree in the year 1980 , The French accolade where he was given the title Knight in the year 1987 and the Arab-French prize in the year 1994 for the novel "Resalet El Basaar fe El Masaar " .
In our interview with Mr. Gamal El Ghitani we asked him if uses computers to help him with his work and he said that he has absolutely nothing to do with computers and that when he needs something from the internet or so he gets his son to do it for him , which goes to show that many people still rely on the good old pen and paper to do their work just the way they learned .