Shortlist for the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction announced
Danshmand by Ahmed Fal Al Din, The Valley of the Butterflies by Azher Jirjees, The Andalusian Messiah by Taissier Khalaf, The Prayer of Anxiety by Mohamed Samir Nada, The Touch of Light by Nadia Najar, and The Women's Charter by Haneen Al-Sayegh have on been announced on Wednesday as the six shortlisted works for the 18th International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).
The winner will be announced on Thursday 24 April 2025 in Abu Dhabi. The shortlist was revealed at a press conference at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt by this year's Chair of Judges, Egyptian academic, Mona Baker. She appeared alongside her fellow judges – Moroccan academic and critic Said Bengrad, Emirati critic and academic Maryam Al Hashimi, Lebanese researcher and academic Bilal Orfali, and Finnish translator Sampsa Peltonen – as well as IPAF's Chair of Trustees Professor Yasir Suleiman, Prize Administrator Fleur Montanaro, and Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Professor Ahmed Zayed.
The shortlisted authors for IPAF's 18th edition range in age from 38 to 58 and represent six countries: Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Mauritania, Syria, and UAE. Collectively the authors explore a diverse range of themes through distinct narrative styles and approaches to storytelling.
Four of the shortlisted authors – Ahmed Fal Al Din, Mohamed Samir Nada, Nadia Najar, and Haneen Al-Sayegh - are being recognised for the first time. Azher Jirjees was shortlisted for the Prize in 2023 with The Stone of Happiness after being longlisted in 2020; and Taissier Khalaf was longlisted in 2017 with The Slaughter of the Philosophers. Ahmed Fal Al Din is the first Mauritanian author to be shortlisted in the Prize's history.
Listed in alphabetical order by author surname, the full 2025 shortlist is as follows:
Azher Jirjees The Valley of the Butterflies Iraq Dar al-Rafidain
Taissier Khalaf The Andalusian Messiah Syria Al Mutawassit
Mohamed Samir Nada The Prayer of Anxiety Egypt Masciliana
Nadia Najar The Touch of Light UAE Al-Mutawassit
Haneen Al-Sayegh The Women's Charter Lebanon Dar al-Adab
Mona Baker, Chair of the 2025 judges, said:'This year's six shortlisted novels are notable for their focus on the humanity of their protagonists, whether it be a Druze woman in a twenty-first century Lebanese village (The Women's Charter), or the Islamic cleric Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali in the twelfth century (Danshmand). They depict human journeys, such as that of a young blind woman exploring her four senses in The Touch of Light, and the journey of the Andalusian Issa or Jesús searching for his mother's killer in The Andalusian Messiah, blending reality and imagination, and mixing tragedy with comedy. In The Valley of the Butterflies, the main character uses sarcasm as a weapon to confront tragic reality; while in The Prayer of Anxiety, the individual figures can also be viewed as political or social symbols, and the novel's lifelike scenarios can be interpreted on many different levels.
'The judges' main concern was not subject matter alone. The novel is first and foremost an artistic construction, and narrative representation and its forms are the novelist's means of creating worlds that can only be achieved through imagination.'
Professor Yasir Suleiman, Chair of the Board of Trustees, said: 'This is a shortlist to savour and enjoy for its range of themes, stylistic artistry, diversity of voices and demographic spread. The anthropological framework in some of the novels takes the reader on journeys of discovery in which the narration strays onto less trodden pathways in Arab cultural life. Female characters and family dynamics feature prominently in some of the shortlisted works, revealing at times the slow and tortuous pace of social change. The effects of recent political calamities in the Arab world permeate some of the novels, revealing a dystopian world of loss, social disintegration and searing fears. There is no doubt that this shortlist will appeal to swathes of Arab readers and, when translated, to foreign readers who will find so much to marvel at. The appearance of four new writers on the list, including the first Mauritanian ever, will be a source of pleasure to reading audiences.'
The winner of the 18th International Prize for Arabic Fiction will be announced on Thursday 24 April 2025 at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi that will also be streamed online.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction is awarded for novels in Arabic and each of the six shortlisted finalists receives $10,000, with a further $50,000 going to the winner. It is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi.
The aim of IPAF is to reward excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing and to encourage the readership of high-quality Arabic literature internationally through the translation and publication of winning and shortlisted novels in other major languages. Recent winning IPAF novels which have been published or are forthcoming in English include Mohammed Alnaas's Bread on Uncle Milad's Table (winner 2022, anticipated publication in 2026 from HarperVia) and A Mask, the Colour of the Sky (winner 2024, forthcoming from Europa Editions in 2026). A Mask, the Colour of the Sky has already been published in Italian (edizione/e) and Greek (Salto) and will be published in Portuguese and Spanish.
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The National
25-04-2025
- The National
How Mohamed Samir Nada captured region's deepest fears in award-winning novel The Prayer of Anxiety
Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza When The Prayer of Anxiety was announced as the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction on Thursday, the judging panel at the Abu Dhabi ceremony noted how the pensiveness pervading the characters and prose left readers ill at ease. The same could be said for winning author Mohamed Samir Nada, who described the nomination process as nerve-racking. 'I remember asking the panel, almost half-jokingly, why it takes 70 days for shortlisted authors to wait to find out if they've won,' he tells The National. 'While I am honoured and extremely happy to win, the whole process has been a form of torture and I was too anxious to write anything. I'm glad there's some closure now and I can return to some form of normality.' Not so fast. As the award winner – the prize includes $50,000 and an English translation of the novel – Nada will make a number of public appearances at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, beginning tomorrow and running until May 6. 'Now, this is something I don't mind,' he beams. 'I don't think many people understand how important book fairs are when it comes to Arabic literature. 'It's a place where many writers found their first inspirations to write their stories. Whenever I go to a book fair, it always puts whatever achievement I have into perspective because of the great works that are already out there. It reminds me that I am first and foremost a reader who views writing as a healthy hobby.' Indeed, The Prayer of Anxiety was written in the gaps between Nada's current job as a finance director in a Cairo company. He describes the job as one 'where rules are followed and there is a strict order to things. Hence why I write, it's the only time I feel really free.' It is a fitting irony given the claustrophobic and cagey atmosphere of Prayer of Anxiety, set in an isolated village where residents believe they are surrounded by a minefield. With the authorities as their only link to the outside world, they are led to believe that former president Gamal Abdel Nasser is still alive; that the war with Israel that began in 1967 is continuing; and that their village may be the country's first line of defence. Nada says the narrative ploy is more than an attempt to write an alternative fictional account of the region. Many of the issues it raises remain pertinent today, particularly in the context of the Israel–Gaza war. 'I really wanted to explore the idea of how disinformation can control a modern society,' he adds. 'Social media was supposed to provide freedom of expression, but it ended up becoming a tool for those who want to control public opinion. 'Just look at what has been happening in Gaza over the past two years and the timid reaction from the American and European media. 'It makes you wonder what people in those parts of the world are actually seeing – and what they are not being shown. For me, this is a form of falsification and deception, and it is something I really explore in the book.' Told through the lives of eight interlinked characters – from a parent anguished by his son's conscription into the army due to a clerical error, to a family desperately seeking a veterinary surgeon to save their dying livestock – worry and anxiety course through their lives, blinding them to the wider restrictions imposed on their community. That mosaic of paranoia and deception is the point, Nada notes. 'And I really do feel that this has been the emotional state of the Arab world since the Nakba in 1948,' he says. 'Ever since, there has been this feeling that everyone is just engrossed in their own worries, no matter how big or small, without looking beyond them. 'In Egypt, where I am from, the main anxiety shared by everyone – no matter your salary – is: how can I secure the bread and butter for my family? It is a state of mind that is hard to escape, and perhaps we are not encouraged to escape it. 'Because once we do, we might start asking better questions about our lives and dreaming bigger – for ourselves, our families, and our communities.' This is the main takeaway Nada hopes readers carry from The Prayer of Anxiety, which he describes as ultimately a hopeful book. 'The story is narrated by a survivor, so that tells you there is still hope for us to change our condition,' he says. With the Ipaf award providing funding for a future English translation, Nada is excited to see whether the pain imbued in his story can resonate beyond the Arab world. 'The prospect of having non-Arabs read my work is really exciting,' he says, before adding: 'It is also a test. I want to see if they can understand and empathise with our misery and the suffering of our people – and grasp what it means for us to live in a country that is not occupied.'
The National
25-04-2025
- The National
Egyptian author Mohamed Samir Nada wins International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Prayer of Anxiety
Egyptian novelist Mohamed Samir Nada has won the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Prayer of Anxiety. Nada was awarded the $50,000 prize for his poetic third novel at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. The prize comes with additional funding for an English translation. It is the first time an Egyptian has triumphed in the competition since 2009, when Youssef Ziedan won for his novel Azazeel. Published by Masciliana, The Prayer of Anxiety is set in an isolated village in Upper Egypt where residents believe they are surrounded by a minefield. They do not know much about the wider world except that a war with Israel has been raging for a decade and their village may be the first line of defence keeping the enemy from entering Egypt. In an interview with Ipaf website, Nada describes the novel's writing process as instructive. 'The idea for the novel came to me at the end of 2017," he says. "It began as a poem, before becoming a short novel and then a weighty novel, which I returned to and shaved off passages until it finally took its published form. 'The anxiety pervading its characters was also present in the text itself, as it shifted between genres and expressive forms. So my journey with the novel was in essence a learning curve, which I began with poetry and where I would remind myself of the saying of [eighth century Iraqi writer and academic] Al-Jahiz in which he stated, 'There is no good in speech which does not express your meaning.'' Egyptian-British academic and translator Mona Baker, chairwoman of this year's Ipaf judging panel, hailed the work for posing some unsettling questions to readers. 'The Prayer of Anxiety won because it successfully transforms anxiety into an aesthetic and intellectual experience that resonates with the reader and awakens them to pressing existential questions,' she says. 'Mohamed Samir Nada blends polyphony and symbolism with captivating poetic language, making reading a sensory experience where revelation intersects with silence, and truth with illusion. This novel is more than about just a village in Upper Egypt, it becomes a metaphor for societies besieged by fear and authoritarianism, giving the novel dimensions that transcend geography and touch upon universal human themes.' Prof Yasir Suleiman, chairman of the award's board of trustees, calls it a future classic of contemporary Arabic literature. 'Enchanted by the elegant writing and the deft structure of the novel, the reader is drawn into a dystopian microcosm with polyphonous meanings that adroitly captures one until the end,' he says. 'Crafted with considerable virtuosity and narrative acumen, The Prayer of Anxiety is engaging and thought-provoking. It is destined to become a classic in the Arab literary scene in years to come.' Born in Iraq before moving to Tripoli, and later settling in Cairo, Nada's career is as varied as his literary voice. While working in the tourism sector and currently serving as a financial director in Cairo, he has written novels and contributed cultural commentary to Egyptian newspapers. His previous books include 2016's Malika's Kingdom and 2021's The Confession of the Walls. Nada emerged from a dynamic shortlist that included Emirati writer Nadia Najar's The Touch of Light, a novel that delves into various aspects of the region's past, including the history of Dubai before the discovery of oil. Mauritanian novelist Ahmed Fal Al Din was also on the shortlist for Danshmand, which reimagines the life of the 12th century imam and scholar Abu Hamid Al Ghazali, as was The Valley of the Butterflies by Iraqi writer Azher Jirjees, which looks at Baghdad's development over the past two decades through a mix of fantasy, drama and comedy. All shortlisted novels were awarded $10,000. Nada and shortlisted authors can be expected to appear in sessions at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, taking place at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre from Saturday until May 6.
The National
24-04-2025
- The National
Egyptian author Mohamed Samir Nada wins 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Prayer of Anxiety
Egyptian novelist Mohamed Samir Nada has won the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Prayer of Anxiety. Nada was awarded the $50,000 prize for his poetic third novel at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. The prize comes with additional funding for an English translation. It is the first time an Egyptian has triumphed in the competition since 2009, when Youssef Ziedan won for his novel Azazeel. Published by Masciliana, The Prayer of Anxiety is set in an isolated village in Upper Egypt where residents believe they are surrounded by a minefield. They do not know much about the wider world except that a war with Israel has been raging for a decade and their village may be the first line of defence keeping the enemy from entering Egypt. In an interview with Ipaf website, Nada describes the novel's writing process as instructive. 'The idea for the novel came to me at the end of 2017," he says. "It began as a poem, before becoming a short novel and then a weighty novel, which I returned to and shaved off passages until it finally took its published form. 'The anxiety pervading its characters was also present in the text itself, as it shifted between genres and expressive forms. So my journey with the novel was in essence a learning curve, which I began with poetry and where I would remind myself of the saying of [eighth century Iraqi writer and academic] Al-Jahiz in which he stated, 'There is no good in speech which does not express your meaning.'' Egyptian-British academic and translator Mona Baker, chairwoman of this year's Ipaf judging panel, hailed the work for posing some unsettling questions to readers. 'The Prayer of Anxiety won because it successfully transforms anxiety into an aesthetic and intellectual experience that resonates with the reader and awakens them to pressing existential questions,' she says. 'Mohamed Samir Nada blends polyphony and symbolism with captivating poetic language, making reading a sensory experience where revelation intersects with silence, and truth with illusion. This novel is more than about just a village in Upper Egypt, it becomes a metaphor for societies besieged by fear and authoritarianism, giving the novel dimensions that transcend geography and touch upon universal human themes.' Prof Yasir Suleiman, chairman of the award's board of trustees, calls it a future classic of contemporary Arabic literature. 'Enchanted by the elegant writing and the deft structure of the novel, the reader is drawn into a dystopian microcosm with polyphonous meanings that adroitly captures one until the end,' he says. 'Crafted with considerable virtuosity and narrative acumen, The Prayer of Anxiety is engaging and thought-provoking. It is destined to become a classic in the Arab literary scene in years to come.' Born in Iraq before moving to Tripoli, and later settling in Cairo, Nada's career is as varied as his literary voice. While working in the tourism sector and currently serving as a financial director in Cairo, he has written novels and contributed cultural commentary to Egyptian newspapers. His previous books include 2016's Malika's Kingdom and 2021's The Confession of the Walls. Nada emerged from a dynamic shortlist that included Emirati writer Nadia Najar's The Touch of Light, a novel that delves into various aspects of the region's past, including the history of Dubai before the discovery of oil. Mauritanian novelist Ahmed Fal Al Din was also on the shortlist for Danshmand, which reimagines the life of the 12th century imam and scholar Abu Hamid Al Ghazali, as was The Valley of the Butterflies by Iraqi writer Azher Jirjees, which looks at Baghdad's development over the past two decades through a mix of fantasy, drama and comedy. All shortlisted novels were awarded $10,000. Nada and shortlisted authors can be expected to appear in sessions at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, taking place at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre from Saturday until May 6.
