As Professor of Arabic at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr Michael Cooperson spends his days teaching Arabic classes bursting with excited students. When not teaching, he translates books from Arabic to English.
Dr Cooperson has published two monographs on early Abbasid cultural history, Classical Arabic Biography and Al-Ma’mun.
His varied translations include Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Author and his Doubles, Khayri Shalabi’s The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets, Jurji Zaydan’s Brothers at War, and Ibn al-Jawzī’s Virtues of the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
Dr Cooperson is currently a fellow of the Library of Arabic Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi, where he is working on a translation of al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt.