Atef Abu Saif is the author of four novels: The Salty Grape of Paradise, Shadows in the Memory, Snowball, and The Tale of the Harvest Night. He has also published a collection of short stories entitled Everything Is Normal., and a work of nonfiction, Civil Society and the State: Theoretical Perspectives with Particular Reference to Palestine. He is a regular contributor to several Palestinian and Arabic newspapers and journals. Noam Chomsky is an American political theorist and activist, and institute professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Besides his work in linguistics, he is internationally recognized as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.