علي الدوعاجي

Ali Douagi (also transliterated Ali al-Du'aji) was a Tunisian short-story writer, journalist, poet, playwright and radio dramatist, widely regarded as the father of the modern Tunisian short story. Born in Tunis to a family of Turkish descent, he left formal schooling early and was largely self-taught through wide reading in Arabic and French literature.

In the 1930s he became a central figure of "Taht al-Sur" (Under the Wall), Tunis's most influential literary and artistic circle, and founded the satirical weekly newspaper Al-Sourour in 1936.

Over a short career he wrote more than 500 songs and folk poems, around 150 radio plays and some fifteen stage works, in addition to the short fiction later collected posthumously as Sahirtu Minhu al-Layali (1969). He died of tuberculosis in Tunis in 1949, aged 40.