International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2025 shortlist announced

Ahmed Fal Al Din and Mohamed Samir Nada are on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2025 shortlist announced at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt on Wednesday, February 19, 2025.

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction rewards excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing while encouraging the readership of high-quality Arabic literature through the translation and publication of winning and shortlisted novels in other major languages. Previous winners include Bahaa Taher (2008), Yusuf Zeydan (2009), Abdo Khal (2010), Mohammed Achaari (2011), Rabee Jaber (2012), Saud Alsanousi (2013), Ahmed Saadawi (2014), Shukri Mabkhout (2015), Rabai al-Madhoun (2016), Mohammed Hasan Alwan (2017), Ibrahim Nasrallah (2018), Hoda Barakat (2019), Mohamed Alnaas (2022), and Basim Khandaqji (2024).

Egyptian academic Mona Baker chairs the 2025 jury alongside Moroccan academic and critic Said Bengrad, Emirati critic and academic Maryam Al Hashimi, Lebanese researcher and academic Bilal Orfali, and Finnish translator Sampsa Peltonen. They read the 124 submissions and announced a longlist of 16 stories on Tuesday, January 7 before the shortlist was made public on Wednesday.

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.”

The shortlistees who hold passports from African countries are;

• Danshmand, Ahmed Fal Al Din (Mauritania), Masciliana
• The Prayer of Anxiety, Mohamed Samir Nada (Egypt), Masciliana

The winner who receives the US$50,000 cash prize, shortlistees each receive US$10,000, will be announced at a ceremony on Thursday, April 24, 2025.