Alaa Al Aswany was born on May 26, 1957. His mother, Zainab, was from an aristocratic family, where her uncle was Minister of Education before the July Revolution. His father, Abbas Al-Aswany, came from Aswan to Cairo in 1950, where he was a writer, novelist and lawyer. He wrote articles in Rose Al-Youssef under the title Aswanyat, and in 1972 he received the State Appreciation Award for Novel and Literature. He completed his secondary education at the French Lycee school in Egypt. He received his Bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Oral and Dental Medicine, Cairo University in 1980 and his Master's degree in Dentistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. Still working in his clinic in the Garden City neighborhood, Al Aswany also learned Spanish literature in Madrid. Al Aswany speaks four languages: Arabic, English, French and Spanish. Alaa Al-Aswany is the first Egyptian to receive the Bruno Kreisky Prize, which was won by the African activist Nelson Mandela and was followed by the late Palestinian activist Faisal Al-Husseini. He is also the first Egyptian and Arab to receive the achievement award from an American university (University of Illinois) for the year 2010, which is the highest award granted by the university to its graduates. Of the 600,000 alumni who completed their studies at the University of Illinois, only a few alumni have won the award, the 43rd winner in the university's history.