Hamoud Salem (1931 – February 24, 2013) is a pioneering Egyptian writer in adventure literature. He has a number of series of detective books and puzzles for children and young adults, most notably The Five Adventurers and The 13 Devils.
Salem was born in Alexandria in 1931 to a father who worked as a naval officer in the Coast Guard, which allowed him to move and live during his childhood in several coastal cities such as Alexandria, Manzala, Baltim and others, until he obtained his high school diploma, moving between Mansoura, Damietta and Beni Suef. After obtaining his high school diploma, he joined the Military College, but his joining the Hadtu movement, which was one of the secret leftist groups in Egypt, prevented him from completing his studies there, although he was not an active member of the movement. Salem then moved to the Faculty of Law and then the Faculty of Arts, but he did not complete his studies because general reading, in addition to his favorite hobby, fishing, took up all his time, until one of his relatives helped him and mediated to appoint him as an employee in the Ministry of Social Affairs. His journey with journalism began when he met journalists Sobhi Moussa and Gamal Selim, the father of cartoonist Amr Selim, who worked for the magazine “Al-Risala Al-Jadida” which was published by Dar Al-Tahrir. He then worked as a military correspondent for Al-Jumhuriya newspaper during the tripartite aggression in 1956, and after achieving success in his journalistic coverage of the war, he resigned from his government job and devoted himself to journalism, until he became head of the incidents department at Al-Jumhuriya before moving to work at Dar Al-Hilal. In Samir magazine, published by Dar Al Hilal, Mahmoud Salem discovered his talent for writing for children, and became responsible for editing the magazine, until Nadia Nashat, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, left Dar Al Hilal when it was nationalized in 1961, to move to Dar Al Maaref, and Salem moved to Radio and Television magazine.