The Prayer of Anxiety wins 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction - Middle East Business News and Information - mid-east.info

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26-04-2025

Mohamed Samir Nada wins 18 th edition of International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Prayer of Anxiety
edition of International Prize for Arabic Fiction for Nada is an Egyptian writer, and this is his third novel; he is the first Egyptian novelist to win the prize since 2009
The events of the novel take place in an isolated village in Egypt, during a socially and politically turbulent period as seen through the eyes of its community
The Prayer of Anxiety by Mohamed Samir Nada was announced today as the winner of the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). The novel, published by Masciliana, was named as this year's winner by Chair of Judges Mona Baker during a ceremony in Abu Dhabi that was also streamed online.
The judges selected the winning book from 124 submitted titles as the best novel published in Arabic between July 2023 and June 2024. The Prize was presented by Asma Siddiq Al Mutawa, founder of the Al Multaqa literary salon.
In the novel, storytelling is intertwined with symbolism in an unsettling narrative with multiple voices and layers. Depicting a transformative period in Egypt's history, the decade after the 1967 Naksa, the book is an interrogation of the commonly held narrative of the Naksa and subsequent Arab illusions of victory.
Mona Baker, Chair of the 2025 Judges, said:
'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. 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. In this novel, 'Nagaa al-Manasi' is more than 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.'
Professor Yasir Suleiman, Chair of the Board of Trustees, said:
'The Prayer of Anxiety is an outstandingly beautiful and intriguing novel. Referencing history, its immediate conceptualisation around the 1967 war does not make it a historical novel. The occasion of this war is cleverly used to probe the structure of political tyranny in an isolated and forgotten village in Egypt. Coercion, manipulation, co-optation and the occlusion of meaning drive the inhabitants into submission and utter despair. Turning to organised religion for worldly redemption through a hurriedly concocted 'prayer of anxiety' offers little solace, rather brings occasion for dispute and no clear way out. 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. 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.'
Based in Cairo, (where he is the financial director for a tourism company), Mohamed Samir Nada has written articles for numerous Arabic newspapers and websites, and published two earlier novels: Malika's Kingdom (2016) and The Confession of the Walls (2021).
This is the first time the author has been recognised by the prize, and it is also the prize's first Egyptian winner since 2009. The novel is published by Masciliana.
Alongside Mohamed Samir Nada, the 2024 shortlist features novels by Ahmed Fal Al Din (Mauritania), Azher Jirjees (Iraq), Taissier Khalaf (Syria), Nadia Najar (UAE), and Haneen Al-Sayegh (Lebanon).
The panel of five judges was chaired by Egyptian academic Mona Baker. Joining her on the judging panel were Moroccan academic and critic Said Bengrad, Emirati critic and academic Maryam Al Hashimi, Lebanese researcher and academic Bilal Orfali, and Finnish translator Sampsa Peltonen.
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 in other major languages of novels recognised by the prize (whether as winners, or on shortlists or longlists).
Winning book: Synopsis and author bio:
Mohamed Samir Nada is an Egyptian writer, born in Iraq in 1978. He has lived in Baghdad, Cairo and Tripoli in Libya. After graduating from business college, he worked in the tourism sector and is currently financial director for a tourism company in Cairo. He has published numerous articles in Arabic newspapers and on websites, such as Al-Ahram, Al-Shorouk and London-based Al-Arab. He has a personal blog where he publishes reviews of novels. He is the author of three novels: Malika's Kingdom (2016), The Confession of the Walls (2021) and The Prayer of Anxiety (2024).
The Prayer of Anxiety:
In 1977, in the isolated and forgotten village of Nag' Al-Manassi in the heart of Upper Egypt, the inhabitants believe that a minefield surrounds the village, which would be dangerous to attempt to cross. Little is known about the wider world, except that a war between Egypt and Israel has been raging since 1967 and the Israeli enemy is trying to penetrate Egypt through the village, meaning that Nag' Al-Manassi is the first line of defence on the Egyptian border. Khalil Al-Khoja, the representative of the authorities, acts as the villagers' only link with the outside world. He owns the shop that prints a local paper, The Voice of War, controls all the buying and selling of vital goods, and starts to conscript people into the war. After an unknown object – possibly a meteorite or a satellite – falls upon the village, an epidemic disfigures the population, including the newborn children. An unknown hand begins to inscribe people's hidden sins on the village walls, and in an attempt to cure the village, the local Sheikh invents a new prayer, the 'Prayer of Anxiety'. Through the perspectives of eight different characters, readers learn the history of the village from the 1967 Naksa, better known in English as the Six-Day War, through to the epidemic. At the core of this elaborate mosaic is an interrogation of the commonly held narrative of the Naksa, and subsequent Arab illusions of victory.
IPAF Shortlist 2025
Author
Title
Nationality
Publisher
Ahmed Fal Al Din
Danishmand
Mauritania
Masciliana
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 Covenant
Lebanon
Dar al-Adab
IPAF Judging panel 2025 — biographies
Mona Baker (Chair, Egypt) is a university professor and researcher in the field of Translation Studies. She is the director of the Baker Centre for Translation (named after her) at Shanghai International Studies University, China. Two of her best-known works, In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (1992) and Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (2006), have been translated into Arabic and numerous other languages. She has contributed articles and research to various international journals and has won several prizes honouring her work. These include the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Award for Translation awarded by Saudi Arabia (2011), and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Prize in the field of Arts, Languages, Foreign Language Studies and Literature (2015).
Said Bengrad is a Moroccan university professor in the Arts College of Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco. He obtained a doctorate from the Sorbonne University, Paris, and a state doctorate from Moulay Ismail University, Meknes, Morocco. He has won numerous prizes, including the Atlas Award for translation, given by the French government (2006), and the Morocco Book Prize (2010). He is a specialist in Semiotics, in its branches of Narrative, Imagery and Culture. His publications include Fictional Narrative and the Experience of Meaning (2008, 2024); The Orbits of Language, between Fuṣḥā Arabic and Dialect (2022); Narrative Identity: the Narrative between Fictional Imagining and History (2023); Interpretation and the Experience of Meaning (2023); and The Image and Outcomes of Looking (2024).
Maryam Al Hashimi is a critic and university academic from the UAE. She is head of the Criticism Club in the Emirati Writers' Union and has won numerous UAE prizes, including the 2017 Rashid bin Saeed Prize for Outstanding Achievement; the 2019 Al-Owais Award for Creativity (in the category of the best writer from the UAE); and the 2022 Sharjah Award for Gulf Women's Creativity (first place, in the category of critical studies). She also won the Excellence Award (in the category of scientific studies) from the Indian Al-Nahda magazine in 2021. She is the author of publications on literary criticism and philosophy, including Lament for Cities and Kingdoms between Baghdad and Andalusia: A Study of Saadi Shirazi and Abu Al-Baqa Al-Rundi (2009), The Development of the Poetic Movement in the Emirates: Jama'a al-Hira (2017), The Intellect: Between Talent and Genius (2023), and Narrative Transformations in Emirati Literature: An Artistic Study (2024). She has served on many cultural and literary judging panels, including the 2023 Al-Owais Award (in the literary criticism category), the 2023 Sharjah Book Fair Prize (in the literary creativity category), and the 2023 Sharjah Award for Gulf Women's Creativity.
Bilal Orfali, a Lebanese researcher and academic, is the Sheikh Zayed Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut, and Director of the Centre for Arts and Humanities and the university's publishing house. He specialises in Arabic and Islamic literatures, as well as the Qur'an, Sufism, and narratology. He is editor of various publications: Al-Markaz Journal of Arabic Studies; Al-Abhath Journal; Texts and Studies on the Qur'an; Handbook of Sufi Studies; and the Sheikh Zayed Series for Arabic and Islamic Texts and Studies. He is an associate editor of The Journal of Arabic Literature, published by Brill, and an editor of The Library of Arabic Literature, a project of New York University Abu Dhabi. He serves on the advisory boards of several international journals, book series, and projects in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. He is author and editor of more than two dozen books in Arabic and English.
Sampsa Peltonen is a Finnish translator who works in the fields of literature and media. He studied Foreign Languages at the University of Turku, Finland, and deepened his knowledge of various Arab regions and dialects through extensive periods spent in the Middle East and North Africa. He has translated novels, short stories, plays and poetry from Arabic and French into Finnish, winning two prestigious Finnish prizes – the WSOY Foundation Prize in 2014 for his translation of Hassan Blasim's works, and the 2023 Agricola Prize for his translation of Mohammed Mbougar Sarr's The Most Secret Memory of Men, which won The Goncourt Prize. For his contributions as a language expert, he was appointed member of the National Council for Finnish Language, where he served from 2015-2021. In 2021, he was Chair of the judging panel of the Finlandia Prize, the most important literary prize in Finland. In the field of media, he works as a translator at the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), where he translates documentary films and other media content.
About the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and its work
The previous winners of the prize are:
2008: Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher (Egypt)
2009: Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan (Egypt)
2010: Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles by Abdo Khal (Saudi Arabia)
2011: The Arch and the Butterfly by Mohammed Achaari (Morocco) and The Doves' Necklace by Raja Alem (Saudi Arabia)
2012: The Druze of Belgrade by Rabee Jaber (Lebanon)
2013: The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi (Kuwait)
2014: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi (Iraq)
2015: The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout (Tunisia)
2016: Destinies: Concerto of the Holocaust and the Nakba by Rabai al-Madhoun (Palestine)
2017: A Small Death by Mohammed Hasan Alwan (Saudi Arabia)
2018: The Second War of the Dog by Ibrahim Nasrallah (Palestine)
2019: The Night Mail by Hoda Barakat (Lebanon)
2020: The Spartan Court by Abdelouahab Aissaoui (Algeria)
2021: Notebooks of the Bookseller by Jalal Barjas (Jordan)
2022: Bread on the Table of Uncle Milad by Mohamed Alnaas (Libya)
2023: The Water Diviner by Zahran Alqasmi (Oman)
2024: A Mask, the Colour of the Sky by Basim Khandaqji (Palestine) The authors of the shortlisted novels are awarded USD$10,000, and the winner's prize is a further USD$50,000.
An independent Board of Trustees, drawn from across the Arab world and beyond, is responsible for the overall management of the prize. Yasir Suleiman CBE, Professor of Arabic, University of Cambridge, is Chair of Trustees and Evelyn Smith, formerly the Booker Prize Foundation secretary, is a Trustee and Company Secretary. The remaining Trustees are, in alphabetical order: Isobel Abulhoul OBE, Founder, Trustee and former CEO of Emirates Literature Foundation; Yassin Adnan, Moroccan journalist, broadcaster and writer; Abdulla Majed Al Ali, Director General, UAE National Library and Archives, columnist, formerly involved in a number of cultural initiatives in the UAE, including the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, the Kalima Translation Project, the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair and Abu Dhabi libraries; Rasheed El-Enany, Professor Emeritus of the University of Exeter; Michel S. Moushabeck, Founder and President of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., writer, editor, and musician, USA; Zaki Nusseibeh, Cultural Advisor to the President of United Arab Emirates and Chancellor of the UAE University; Seif Salmawy, CEO and co-founder of Al Karma Publishers (Egypt); Ahdaf Soueif, author and political and cultural commentator; and Dr Ali bin Tamim, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, Secretary-General of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, researcher and literary critic, former lecturer at the UAE University and head of the Abu Dhabi Media Company, founder of various literary initiatives. The prize's Administrator is Fleur Montanaro.
To fulfil its ambition to increase the international reach of Arabic fiction, the prize makes funding for English translation available for its winners. Winning novels published or forthcoming in English include Basim Khandaqji's A Mask, the Colour of the Sky , Mohammed Alnaas's Bread on Uncle Milad's Table ; Jalal Barjas's Notebooks of the Bookseller ; Hoda Barakat's The Night Mail (translated as Voices of the Lost , Oneworld); Rabai al-Madhoun's Fractured Destinies: Concerto of the Holocaust and Al Nakba (Hoopoe); Shukri Mabkhout's The Italian (Europa Editions); Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (Oneworld, UK, and Penguin Books, US); Saud Alsanousi's The Bamboo Stalk ; Mohammed Achaari's The Arch and the Butterfly ; Raja Alem's The Dove's Necklace (Duckworth, UK, and Overlook Press, US); Abdo Khal's Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles; Youssef Ziedan's Azazeel (Atlantic Books); and Bahaa Taher's Sunset Oasis (Sceptre).
, Mohammed Alnaas's ; Jalal Barjas's ; Hoda Barakat's (translated as , Oneworld); Rabai al-Madhoun's (Hoopoe); Shukri Mabkhout's (Europa Editions); Ahmed Saadawi's (Oneworld, UK, and Penguin Books, US); Saud Alsanousi's ; Mohammed Achaari's ; Raja Alem's (Duckworth, UK, and Overlook Press, US); Abdo Khal's Youssef Ziedan's (Atlantic Books); and Bahaa Taher's (Sceptre). In addition to the annual prize, IPAF supports literary initiatives including its Nadwa (writers' workshop) for emerging writers from across the Arab world. Established in 2009, the Nadwa was the first of its kind for Arab writers. Each Nadwa results in new fiction by some of the Arab world's most promising authors, some of whom have gone on to have works entered, be shortlisted and even win the Prize. Nine Nadwas have taken place in Abu Dhabi (eight under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and in 2017 supported by the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation). Others have been held in Jordan, Oman and Sharjah, in partnership with, respectively, the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, the Muscat Cultural Club, the Department of Culture — Sharjah Government and the Sharjah Book Authority. IPAF's inaugural editing workshop took place at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation in January 2025.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, part of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi.
About the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre:
The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC), established as part of the Department of Culture and Tourism under the directive of the President of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, is dedicated to advancing and modernising the Arabic language. Through comprehensive strategies and frameworks, the Centre aims to enhance the scientific, educational, cultural, and creative contributions of Arabic, ensuring its relevance in the modern world. It aims to promote Arabic language proficiency and cultural understanding, while supporting Arab talents in the fields of writing, translation, publishing, scientific research, arts, and the creation of audio and visual content. Additionally, it plays a key role in organising book fairs and bolstering the publishing industry in the region. The Centre advances its core vision through dedicated programmes, the expertise of its teams, and impactful partnerships with some of the world's most prestigious technical, cultural, and academic institutions.
The prize is also supported by the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair being held between 26th April – 5th May 2025.