Ibrahim Aslan was an Egyptian novelist and short story writer born in 1935. Aslan was born in Tanta in the Nile delta in 1935, shortly before his family moved south to Cairo.
Aslan emerged on the Arab literary scene in the mid-1960s, and is considered to be part of the movement known as the Sixties Generation which also included such authors as Gamal Ghitany, Sonallah Ibrahim, and Abdel Hakim Qasem. The avant-garde literary magazine Gallery 68 published eight of his stories during its short life.
Aslan published two volumes of short stories, three novels, and two volumes of non-fiction during a literary career spanning more than four decades. His first collection of short stories, called Buhayrat al-Masah (The Evening Lake), was released in 1971–72. A second collection called Youssef wal-Rida (Joseph and the Clothes) was published in 1987.
Aslan is best known for his first novel Malek al-Hazin (1983), translated by Elliott Colla under the English title The Heron; and its sequel 16 years later called As-safir al-Nil (1999), translated as Nile Sparrows by Mona El-Ghobashy.
