Muhammad Aladdin, also known as Alaa Eddin (Arabic:محمـد علاء الديـن) is an Egyptian novelist, short story writer, and script writer. Aladdin has gained acclamation for his first novel published The Gospel According to Adam (Arabic:إنجيل آدم) in January 2006. The work has been hailed by writers like Baha Tahir and Sonallah Ibrahim to be among the best of a promising new crop. That novel breaks the conventional format of the novel, consisting as it does of a single 60-page-long paragraph that is written in a stream of consciousness style. A reviewer for Al-Ahram's literary page on May 10, 2006 stated that The Gospel According to Adam reflects “a social reality that has lost all certainties".
Published Work
Aladdin's literary career began in 2000, when he co-wrote the comic, youth-oriented series Maganin (Mad People), published by Al Mobdeoun publishing house. It was his first encounter with his co-author, prominent Egyptian novelist Ahmad Alaidy, establishing a strong friendship lasted till now. The series have stopped in 2002 after 10 issues, some of which reached 20,000 copies in Egypt and the Arab world. In 2001 he started writing on cinema and light-content essays for 5 issues of another series called Ice Cream from the same publishing house and in 2002 he wrote another series called Comicia for Dar Al Hussam; this lasted for 4 issues.
In 2002 he was one of two writers to participate in an internationally funded workshop on comic-book creation. The result was the tri-lingual Arabic, English, and French. comic album The Adventures of Prince Seif Ibn Zi Yazan (Cairo, Ahamd El Attar, nd 2004).
In 2003 he published his first conventionally literary book, Al Daffa Al Ukhra (The Other Bank), a volume of short stories published by The General Organization for Cultural Palaces, an organ of Egypt's ministry of culture. the book was well received by readers and other writers alike.
In 2004, Aladdin won The General Organization for Cultural Palaces' prize (3rd rank) in its pan-Egyptian central contest, for his unpublished first novel Al Dawa’ir (The Circles). In the same year excerpts from his second novel (was unpublished back then) The Twenty-Second Day (Arabic: اليوم الثاني و العشرون) appeared in the prestigious literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab, then to be published in the Egyptian El-'Ain Publishing House in 2007.
in 2008, he had 2 new books published, The Idole (Arabic: الصنم), a novel from El-'Ain publishing, and The Secret Life of Citizen M (Arabic: الحياة السرية للمواطن م), a short-stories collection, from Mezan publishing house. He had the second printing of The Gospel Accourding to Adam released from Mezan too.
In 2005, he began writing comics for the Saudi children's magazine Basem.
In October 2009, his story New Lover, Young Lover was published in the American A Public Space in its Cairo portfolio, it was translated by Humphrey T. Davies (The Yacoubian Building, Gate of the Sun (Novel)), and was first published in Arabic in November 2009 by the Egyptian Supreme Council for Culture in a special anthology titled "The Best Egyptian Short Stories.
Other works
He participated in The Arab Short stories Conference, and The Arab Novel Conference, both held 2008 and 2009 respectively, and organized by The Supreme Council for Culture-Egypt.
In 2010 he gave a lecture about his works in the Edinburgh University's Middle Eastern Society.
Aladdin has held a creative writing workshop for children of Alexandria upon the request of Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2004.
Lectured on creative writing in International Labour Organization's (ILO) International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) Scream program . in Cairo, 2005.
Participated, as a preteen, in the 1993 United Nations Vienna World Conference on Human Rights. He was a member of the Arab Youth Delegation organized by The Arab Council for Childhood and Development ACCD.
He was a member of youth advisory meeting for the fourth Arab Human Development Report AHDR by the UNDP in 2004.
As of 2005, he has worked as a freelance script writer.
