Kareem Ketafa is an Iraqi novelist, short story writer, journalist, and critic. Born in Baghdad in 1961, he now resides in the Netherlands where he works in the field of engineering. He fought in the insurgency against Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, and The Spider's Siege, his English-language debut, is a fictionalized account of his experiences.

Jonathan Wright is an award-winning translator. His numerous translations from the Arabic include Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize), Hassan Blasim's The Corpse Exhibition (winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), Sinan Antoon's The Book of Collateral Damage, and Ahmed Taibaoui's The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody (winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.) He lives in London.