He obtained his doctoral degree in modern Arabic literature from Oxford University in 1968, the first student to obtain a doctoral degree in that field at Oxford, under the supervision of Dr. M.M. Badawi. The topic of the dissertation was a study (and English translation) of Muhammad al-Muwaylihi’s renowned narrative, Hadith `Isa ibn Hisham (`Isa Ibn Hisham’s Tale); it was later published in book form as A Period of Time (1st [microfiche] edition, 1974; 2nd edition 1992). Roger Allen has retained a life-long interest in the writings of the Al-Muwaylihi family, and in 1998 he was asked by Professor Gaber Asfour, Director-General of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt, to prepare an edition of the complete works of Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (2002), and later of his father, Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi (2007), for publication in a series of “complete works.” In 1968 Roger Allen emigrated from his native-city of Bristol in England to the United States and took a position in Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This position is actually the oldest professorial post in Arabic (as a separate language in its own right) in the United States, dating back to 1788. At the university he has taught many generations of students, now including some of the most distinguished members of the younger generation of specialists in Arabic literature. He has also been very involved in the improvement of methods of teaching the Arabic language in American universities and colleges. He has written a textbook (Let’s Learn Arabic [with Adel Allouche], 1986-88) and from 1986 till 2002 conducted many workshops on language teaching in the USA, Europe, and the Arab world, as the national proficiency trainer in Arabic for the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). In the late 1960s Roger Allen began to concentrate his research on modern Arabic fiction. He began by translating a collection of short stories by Naguib Mahfouz, God’s World (1973, in conjunction with Akef Abadir), that being the collection mentioned in the published citation of the Nobel Literature Prize Committee in 1988 (Roger Allen was centrally involved in the nomination process itself—see the article “Arabic Literature and the Nobel Prize,” in World Literature Today—“A Nobel Symposium”, Winter 1988). He has also translated into English Mahfouz’s Autumn Quail (1985), Mirrors (1st edition, 1977; 2nd edition 1999), Karnak Café (2007), Khan al-Khalili (2008) and One Hour Left (2010). He has also published many individual studies of works by Mahfouz. In addition to the fiction of Mahfouz, he has also translated (and worked closely with) Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (The Ship, and In Search of Walid Masoud, both translated in conjunction with Adnan Haydar), Yusuf Idris (the collection of stories, In the Eye of the Beholder, and also a volume of studies, Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris), `Abd al-rahman Munif (Endings), Mayy Telmissany (Dunyazad—short-listed in England for the prize for the best translated novel of 2000), BenSalim Himmich, The Polymath (2004) and The Theocrat (2005), Ahmad al-Tawfiq, Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors (2006), and Hanan al-Shaykh, The Locust and the Bird (2009). In 1978 Roger Allen delivered at the University of Manchester in England a series of lectures on the Arabic novel that were subsequently published as a book in 1982, The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction (1st edition 1982, Arabic edition, 1986; 2nd edition 1995, 2nd Arabic edition 1998). This book has been widely used throughout the world as an introduction to the novel genre in the Arab world, and it is also used at several Arab-world universities. Beyond this book-length study, he has also prepared a very large number of individual articles on modern Arabic fiction, novels, novellas, and short-stories, that have appeared in journals, festschrifts, and conference volumes (and in both English and Arabic).