Rahnaward Zaryab (Dari: رهنورد زریاب) full name Muhammad Azam Rahnaward Zaryab (محمداعظم رهنورد زریاب), (August 1944 – 10 December 2020)[1] was novelist, short story writer, and journalist from Afghanistan literary critic/scholar.

He received a degree in journalism from Kabul University, and pursued further education in Wales and New Zealand.

On his return to Afghanistan in the early 1970s he took a job with the prominent Zhwandoon Magazine as a crime reporter.

Despite critical and commercial success as an author in the 1970s, his ability to make a living from writing has suffered along with the prospects of the Afghanistan middle and intellectual classes since the time of the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Also, the bookshops that now exist in Kabul tend to sell bootleg copies of Iranian works.