قمر على سمرقند

Muhammad al-Mansi Qandil was born in the city of Mahalla al-Kubra in the Gharbia Governorate, Egypt in 1949 AD. Among his colleagues in this ephemeral city were Dr. Jaber Asfour, who became one of the greatest Arab critics, and Dr. Nasr Abu Zayd, the reformist Islamic thinker, the well-known storyteller, Saeed al-Kafrawi, the sweet neighbor of the Prophet, and the poets Muhammad Farid Abu Saada, Mohammed Saleh and others.

Al-Mansi graduated from Mansoura College of Medicine in 1975 AD and worked after his graduation in the countryside of Minya Governorate for a year and a half, a period from which he learned most of his experiences from the Egyptian village. Which did not leave his memory of the novelist until now, then moved to the health insurance in Cairo before retiring from medicine and devote himself to writing.

While he was still a student at Mansoura College of Medicine in 1970, he won the first prize in the Story Club for the story “The Song of the Empty Morgue,” which embodied the feelings of a poor medical student. He won the State Encouragement Award in 1988. He also won the Popular Culture Award for the story "Safan Matt", which tells the tragedy of migrant workers.