Ali Salem

From the premiere of his first play in 1965, he wrote 25 plays and fifteen books.^[3] One of the best known, The School of Troublemakers, debuted in 1971 and featured a rowdy class of children transformed by a kind teacher.^[2] His plays The Phantom of Heliopolis, The Comedy of Oedipus, The Man Who Fooled the Angels, and The Buffet have also become "classics of the Egyptian theater".^[3] Salem's plays often include allegorical critiques of Egyptian politics with a strong vein of humor and satire.^[3]

In 1994, he wrote a book entitled My Drive to Israel about a trip he took to the country to satisfy his curiosity about it following the signing of the Oslo Accords.^[4][5] He later claimed that the trip was not "a love trip, but a serious attempt to get rid of hate. Hatred prevents us from knowing reality as it is".^[2] He spent 23 nights in Israel and concluded that "real co-operation" between the two nations should be possible.^[4] Though the book sold more than 60,000 copies, a bestseller by Egyptian standards, it provoked controversy, and Salem was subsequently ostracized from the Egyptian intellectual community and expelled from its Writer's Syndicate as a result of his "propaganda."^[2] He did not have a play or movie script produced in Egypt after the book's publication,^[4][6] though he continued to contribute columns to foreign media such as the London-based Al Hayat.^[2] Salem's memoir was later adapted by Ari Roth into the play Ali Salem Drives to Israel, which had its world premiere in the US in 2005.^[7][8]

In 2008, he won the Train Foundation's $50,000 Civil Courage Prize in recognition of his opposition to Islamic extremism and his support of cooperation with Israel.^[6] He also received an honorary doctorate from Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2005.^[3]

He died in Cairo on 22 September 2015, after a long illness.^[5][9]

• Hugi, Jacky. "Death of Egyptian author who drove across Israel leaves void in Israeli-Egyptian relations", Al-Monitor on-line magazine; 30 Sept. 2015.
• Mikics, David. "The Muslim World's Intellectual Refuseniks Offer Enlightened Views on Islam and Israel", TabletMag.com on-line magazine; 3 Dec. 2013.