He is professor of modern Arabic language and literature at the Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence (France). He has spent more than 15 years in Egypt as a student of Arabic language, a program officer at the French cultural mission and a researcher. Since his first stay in Cairo, he has been an active translator of modern Arabic works, mainly Egyptian fiction. His doctoral thesis on the modern Egyptian literary field has been published by AUC Press in an updated English translation as Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State and Society in Modern Egypt (translated by David Tresilian, 2008)
