Gilbert Sinoué (born 18 February, 1947 in Cairo, Egypt) is a classically trained Egyptian novelist and guitarist.. At age 19, he went to France and enrolled in the Paris national music conservatory and was trained as a guitar player. He later gave music classes teaching guitar playing.

He published his first novel in 1987, La Pourpre et l’olivier ou Calixte 1er le pape oublié, the life of the 16th pope and his quite tragic destiny, which won the prize Jean d’Heurs for best historical novel. In 1989, he published Avicenne ou La route d'Ispahan which describes the life of the persian doctor, philosopher and scientist Avicenna (Abu Ali Ibn Sina in Arabic). His third novel The Egyptian, the first part of a saga that tells of the still not well known Egypt of the 18 and 19 centuries. This novel was published in 1991 and won the literary prize Quartier latin.

Gilbert Sinoué quickly imposed himself as a wonderful storyteller, be it a novel, a biography like "The last pharao" depicting the constant battle of Mehmet Ali, the pacha with the Ottoman empire, or a thriller in which he conversed with God like "Le Livre de Saphir" (The Sapphire Book).

Beside being a writer, Gilbert Sinoué is also a scriptwriter and screenwriter.

Bibliography

• La pourpre et l'olivier, novel, 1987
• Avicenne ou la route d'Ispahan (Avicenna or the Road to Ispahan), novel, 1989
• L'égyptienne (the egyptian), novel, 1991
• La fille du Nil (the daughter of the Nile river), novel, 1993
• Le livre de saphir, novel, 1996
• Le dernier pharaon(the last pharao), biography, 1997
• L'enfant de Bruges (the kid of Bruges), novel 1999
• A mon fils, à l'aube du Troisième Millénaire (to my son at the dawn of the third millennium), 2000
• Des jours et des nuits, (of nights and days), novel, 2001
• L'ambassadrice, biography, 2002

Note: translation of books' titles may not be 100% accurate

Official Website

[http://www.sinoue.com] Online : 07th October 2006