Henriette Walter is the author of previous prize winning works published by Robert Laffont such as The Adventure of Languages in the West (1994, Grand Prize by the readers of ELLE 1995, Special Prize by the Comité de la Société des gens de Lettres) and The Adventure of French Words that Come from Elsewhere (1997, Louis Pauwels Prize 1998).
Bassam Baraké is a linguist and professor at the Lebanese University. He is the authors of several dictionaries, including The French-Arabic Dictionary (Editions du temps).