- The shortlist includes authors from four different countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon
- The list features 4 male and 2 female authors, with ages ranging from 37 to 69
- Three authors have been recognised by the Prize previously, with the other three celebrated for the first time
www.arabicfiction.org | #ArabicFiction2026
Images of the judges, the shortlisted authors and their books are available here.
Wednesday 4 February 2026: The Origin of Species by Ahmad Abdulatif, The Absence of Mai by Najwa Barakat, A Cloud Above My Head by Doaa Ibrahim, The Seer by Diaa Jubaili, I Resist the River’s Course by Said Khatibi and Siesta Dream by Amin Zaoui have today been announced as the six shortlisted works for the 19th International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). The winner will be announced on Thursday 9 April 2026 in Abu Dhabi.
The shortlist was revealed at a press conference at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, Manama, Bahrain by this year’s Chair of Judges, Tunisian researcher and critic, Mohamed Elkadhi. He appeared alongside his fellow judges – Palestinian writer and translator Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Bahraini academic and critic Dheya Alkaabi, South Korean academic Laila Hyewon Baek, and Iraqi writer and translator Shakir Nouri – as well as IPAF’s Chair of Trustees Professor Yasir Suleiman, Prize Administrator Fleur Montanaro.
The shortlisted authors for IPAF’s 19th edition range in age from 37 to 69 and represent four countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon. Collectively the authors explore a diverse range of themes through distinct narrative styles and approaches to storytelling.
Three of the shortlisted authors – Najwa Barakat, Doaa Ibrahim and Diaa Jubaili – are being recognised for the first time. Ahmad Abdulatif was longlisted for the prize in 2018 with The Earthen Fortress and again in 2023 with The Ages of Daniel in the City of Threads; Said Khatibi was shortlisted for the prize in 2020 with Firewood of Sarajevo; and Amin Zaoui was longlisted for the prize in 2013 with The Goatherd, in 2018 with Leg Over Leg – in the Sighting of the Lovers’ Crescent, and again in 2024 with The Idols
Listed in alphabetical order by author surname, the full 2026 shortlist is as follows:
| Author | Title | Nationality | Publisher |
| Ahmad Abdulatif | The Origin of Species | Egypt | Hayat Publications |
| Najwa Barakat | The Absence of Mai | Lebanon | Dar al-Adab |
| Doaa Ibrahim | A Cloud Above My Head | Egypt | Dar al-Ain |
| Diaa Jubaili | The Seer | Iraq | Dar Rashm |
| Said Khatibi | I Resist the River’s Course | Algeria | Hachette Antoine |
| Amin Zaoui | Siesta Dream | Algeria | Dar al-Ain |
Mohamed Elkadhi, Chair of the 2026 judges, said:
“The shortlist features a diverse range of narratives that delve into the depths of the human psyche, while also exploring current Arab reality and its varied intellectual currents. They journey through time to past eras, reinterpreting them to reveal hidden aspects of evolving Arab identity.
These novels illustrate the level the Arabic novel has reached, through their openness to contemporary issues and stylistic diversity. Shunning didacticism, they appeal to the evolving tastes of readers who aspire to be partners in the creative process, not merely consumers of texts.”
Professor Yasir Suleiman, Chair of the Board of Trustees, said:
“The Arabic novel has developed in leaps and bounds during the past few decades, progressing under its own steam without forgetting that it is connected to world literature in terms of form and the concerns with which it abounds. The shortlisted novels for this round capture a world of intersectionalities, sometimes connecting the present to the ancient world or the culturally familiar to worlds of unfamiliarity that, in both cases, reveal continuity more than rupture. Interior voices summon the reader as engaged participant in meaning creation without suffocating him or her in over determined narration. The wide-ranging themes in the novels and different narrative stances will appeal to a swathe of publics whether in the original Arabic or in translation.”
The winner of the 19th International Prize for Arabic Fiction will be announced on Thursday 9 April 2026 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 Basim Khandaqji’s A Mask, the Colour of the Sky (winner 2024, anticipated publication in 2026 from Europa Editions), Zahran Alqasmi’s The Water Diviner (winner 2023, forthcoming publication by Hoopoe), and Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table (winner 2022, forthcoming publication by HarperVia). IPAF 2025 novels which are forthcoming in English include Haneen Al-Sayegh’s The Women’s Covenant (2025 shortlisted, anticipated publication by Interlink in 2026), Nadia Najar’s The Touch of Light (2025 shortlisted, forthcoming publication by ELF Publishing in 2026), and Iman Humaydan’s Songs for the Darkness (2025 longlisted, to be published by Interlink in 2026).
For further information about the prize, please visit:
Website www.arabicfiction.org
Facebook @InternationalPrizeforArabicFiction
Instagram @arabicfictionprize
For all media enquiries, interview requests, or to receive the Arabic version of this release, please contact the team at Four Agency:
Ruark Jon-Stevens [email protected] | +44 (0)7402 994 747
Evangeline Quek / [email protected] / +44 (0)20 3103 9694
Notes to Editors
- 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. For further information about the Prize, please visit http://www.arabicfiction.org or follow the prize on Facebook or Instagram.
- Images of the judges, the shortlisted authors, and their book jackets are available to download here.
- This press release is also available in Arabic. Please request via email if required.
IPAF Shortlist 2026 — synopses and biographies
Ahmad Abdulatif is an Egyptian novelist, translator, journalist and researcher, born in 1978 and currently living in Madrid, Spain. He studied Spanish Language and Literature at Cairo University and Arabic Literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has published eight novels. His first, The Keymaker (2010), won the 2011 Egyptian State Encouragement Prize; his third, The Book of the Sculptor (2013), won the 2015 Sawiris Cultural Award; and his fifth, The Earthen Fortress, was IPAF-longlisted in 2018 and translated into Spanish. His novelThe Ages of Daniel in the City of Threads (2022)was IPAF-longlisted in 2023. Abdulatif has written and translated for the cultural press since 2003 and has translated more than forty books from Spanish into Arabic. He won the Egyptian National Centre for Translation Award in 2013 for his translation of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand by Gioconda Belli.
The Origin of Species
How might the world appear in a post-human era, not just in terms of technology, but from a human perspective? The Origin of Species draws on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and pushes it to its extreme to address the crisis of modern humanity. Its protagonists lose not only their hair, fingers, toes and other body parts, but also emotions such as love, hate, and anger. This physical and emotional evolution of humanity mirrors the transformations of Cairo, an ancient city on the brink of extinction, where the dead flee their graves and ghosts wander among the living. The novel depicts the final throes of an old version of humanity before it is replaced by a new one, imagining a fluid concept of time in which different time periods co-exist.
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Najwa Barakat is a Lebanese novelist and journalist, born in 1960. She studied theatre at the College of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University in Beirut before moving to Paris in 1985, where she enrolled in the Film Academy. She has worked in journalism and produced and presented several literary and cultural programmes. She began her writing career in 1986 and her published works include The Bus of the People (1996), Ya Salam (1999), The Language of Secrets (2004), Mr. Noon (2019), and The Absence of Mai (2025). Her works have garnered widespread critical attention and been translated into several languages. She has been shortlisted for and won several international awards, including the shortlist of the Prix de la littérature arabe, (awarded by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris for the best Arabic novel translated into French), for The Secret Language and Mr. Noon in 2015 and 2021 respectively; the shortlist of the 2021 Prix Femina étranger (French Foreign Literature Prize) and the shortlist of the 2023 European EBRD Literature Prize, both for Mr. Noon. She founded the “How to Write a Novel” creative writing workshop, which has resulted in 23 new novels being published by respected Arab publishing houses. She currently researches and presents the weekly literary programme Readings on the Al-Araby 2 channel and writes a weekly column for the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper.
The Absence of Mai
In her flat on the ninth floor, Mai, who is in her eighties, lives alone. From her balcony, she gazes down at Beirut, observing life and the changes taking place in the city. Her two sons are abroad and have entrusted her care to the building’s concierge, Youssef, and the family doctor, Daoud. One day, Mai is startled by a voice calling her name. Who can the visitor be, and how did he manage to get in at dawn, through two locked doors? The Absence of Mai explores the dangerous paths down which memory can lead, the wounds of the heart, and how people can withdraw from emotional connection, even with a cat.
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Doaa Ibrahim is an Egyptian writer, born in 1988. She graduated with a BA in Medicine and Surgery at Alexandria University. Her first collection of short stories, Inscriptions Around a Mural, was published in 2013, followed by A Second Funeral for a Lonely Man (2015), shortlisted twice for the Egyptian Sawiris Cultural Award in two consecutive years. She has four published novels, Adam Has Seven Legs (2017), Six Souls Are Enough to Play (2019), which won the Ghassan Kanafani Prize for Arabic Fiction from the Palestine International Foundation, A Pea Sprouts in My Palm (2023), winner of the Kuwaiti Al-Khutla’ Prize for the Arabic Novel, and A Cloud Above My Head (2024).
A Cloud Above My Head
Told in the first person, this is the story of Noha, whose father abandons her as a child to marry a Japanese woman, while her mother marries one man after another, leaving her a victim of domestic abuse. As an adult, she becomes a nurse who kills her patients and anyone who tries to befriend or love her. She moves to Japan to escape her crimes but finds that she cannot escape herself, continuing her mission to end the lives of everyone she loves. In a Japanese prison, she learns more about this secretive country which drives people to honourable suicide. A Cloud Above My Head is a brutal and profound novel that prompts reflection on the complex mysteries of the human psyche.
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Diaa Jubaili is an Iraqi novelist, born in 1977. He has published over ten novels, four short story collections and a number of short stories in international magazines and periodicals. He has won many literary prizes, including the Dubai Cultural Magazine Award for The Curse of Marquez (2007) in 2007, the Sudanese Tayeb Salih Award for What Would We Do Without Calvino? (2016) in 2017,Kuwait’s Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story for No Windmills in Basra (2018) in 2018 and the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel in the historical novel category for The Precious Narrative of What Was Not Told by Tabari – The Zanj Rebellion (2021) in 2024. His novel The Tree Boy (2021) was shortlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the Children’s and Young Adult Literature category in 2022. His short story collection No Windmills in Basra was translated into English by Chip Rossetti and published by Deep Vellum in the United States.
The Seer
The Seer follows the character Damu the Sumerian on an eternal journey through history. His story begins with the decline of the Sumerian city states and the rise of the Akkadian Empire, then moves through the emergence and fall of Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations, and the waves of invasions, occupations, and major events that shaped Mesopotamia. Across the centuries, states, kingdoms, and empires rise and vanish, culminating in the second decade of the second millennium CE. Damu is both a witness and chronicler of these historical events, and the novel’s central theme – the concept of immortality – is drawn from the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is divided into six books which reflect the evolution of writing and its tools throughout the ages: writing on tablets (the Book of Clay), writing on parchment (the Book of Parchment), writing on papyrus (the Book of Papyrus), writing on ordinary paper (the Book of Paper), writing by typewriter (the Book of Remington), and finally writing by computer (the Book of Microsoft).
**
Said Khatibi is an Algerian novelist, born in 1984. He studied French Literature at the University of Algiers and Cultural Studies at the Sorbonne University. Since 2006 he has worked in journalism and currently lives in Slovenia. His published works include: The Orbit of Absence (a translation into French of Algerian stories, 2009), Book of Sins (2013), Flaming Gardens of the East (2015), Forty Years Waiting for Isabel (2016), which won the 2017 Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel, in the published novels category; and Firewood of Sarajevo (2018), IPAF-shortlisted in 2020 and published in English by Banipal Books and in Serbian by Geopoetika Books. His novel The End of the Desert (2022) won the 2023 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, in the young author category. He also won the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature in 2015.
I Resist the River’s Course
A renowned ophthalmologist and her husband, a doctor in charge of a hospital morgue, conspire to steal corneas from the deceased to sell in her clinic. But when he is murdered and she is interrogated, the secrets of their relationship are exposed. Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, veteran fighters plead for the dismissal of the fabricated charges of collaboration with the French occupiers made against them. The connection between these two different scenarios is revealed as the novel progresses. I Resist the River’s Course chronicles half a century of Algerian history, from the Second World War to the early 1990s, including the War of Liberation and its aftermath.
**
Amin Zaoui is an Algerian novelist who writes in both Arabic and French. He is Professor of Comparative Literature and Contemporary Thought at the Central University of Algiers, and previously taught in the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Paris. He has won numerous international prizes, including the 1998 French Secondary School Students Prize and the 2007 Cultural Dialogue Prize awarded by the President of Italy. He was director of the Algerian National Library until 2008 and was head of the Algerian branch of the Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures. His Arabic novels include: The Neighing of the Body (1982), Satan’s Road (2009), The Goatherd (2011, longlisted for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction), Sensual Delight (2012), The Queen (2014), Leg Over Leg – in the Sighting of the Lovers’ Crescent (2016, IPAF-longlisted in 2018), The Pals (2018), The Pasha’s Secretary (2019), Chewing Gum (2022) and The Idols (2023, IPAF-longlisted in 2024). Among his most successful French novels are La Soumission (1998), Haras de Femmes (2001), Festin de Mensonges (2007), La Chambre de la Vierge Impure (2009) and L’Enfant de l’Oeuf (2017). His novels have been translated into over 13 languages.[RJ1] [m2]
Siesta Dream
Siesta Dream shines a spotlight on female courage. Its central protagonist, Masouda al-Qarih, is an Algerian mother of three who lives through two difficult periods: French colonialism and national independence. At the height of the War of Liberation, she bravely repels an attempted assault by a traitor masquerading as a freedom fighter, who spreads rumours in the village that her husband was killed by the revolutionaries for treachery. In the post-independence period, she is shunned because of these rumours and forced to leave the village. Her son Abdul Qader Al-Makh is assassinated by the rising extremist Islamic movement. Yet Masouda never gives up, courageously facing the collapse unfolding in the nation. When her other son, Idris, appears to avenge his brother’s murder, the novel suggests that betrayal of the revolution and betrayal of independence are two sides of the same coin.
IPAF Judging panel 2026 — biographies
Mohamed Elkadhi is a Tunisian researcher and critic, specialising in Arabic literature and theoretical and applied narratology. He studied at the University of Tunis and received a state doctorate in Arabic literature from Manouba University, Tunisia. He has taught at the University of Tunis since 1983 and served on the judging panels of a number of prizes, including the UAE Sultan Ali Al Owais Cultural Award, the Tunisian COMAR Prize, and the Omani Sultan Qaboos Award. He won the international Ibn Khaldoun-Senghor Translation Award in 2018 and the Taher Haddad Prize for Humanities and Literature in 2023. He is the author of several academic books, including Novel Dialogism (2005); The Novel and History (2008); Challenges of the Arabic Novel: Between Creativity and Universality, co-authored with Said Yaktine (2011); and Sources of Modern Narratology, co-authored with Noureddine Benkhoud (2021). Translations by him include an anthology of Tunisian poetry translated into French (2003); En bas, les nuages, a novel by Marc Dugain translated from French into Arabic (2012); and The Rocking Chair by Tunisian novelist Amal Mokhtar, translated from Arabic into French (2022).
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is a Palestinian poet, novelist, translator and writer of children’s stories, born in Beirut. She has published four novels, four poetry collections, and numerous books of children’s stories. She founded and ran the Palestine Writing Association, which seeks to encourage reading and to publish stories and literary resources. She has translated several novels into Arabic and edited a book of short stories entitled The Book of Ramallah (2021) published by Comma Press, London. Her poetry has been translated into English, French and German. In 2022, her poetry collection You Can Be the Last Leaf (2012) was a finalist for the Barrios Book in Translation Prize, awarded by the National Book Critics Circle in the US, and for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, awarded by Arrowsmith Press in the US. The latter was established to honour the work of Nobel Prize poet Derek Walcott and is awarded annually for a book of poetry by a non-US citizen. Her novel No One Knows Their Blood Type (2013) was translated into English, Italian and Spanish, and shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award and the National Translation Award in Prose from the American Literary Translators Association in 2025. Maya Abu Al-Hayyat lives in occupied Jerusalem.
Dheya Alkaabi is a Bahraini academic and critic working in the field of cultural narratives, histories of critical thought, discourse analysis, feminist studies, and narrative studies of classical and modern texts. She has also founded her own cultural narrative project. She obtained a PhD in Philosophy of Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Jordan and is currently Dean of the College of Arts at the University of Bahrain. She has a large collection of peer-reviewed research and several published works, including Classical Arabic Narrative: Cultural Patterns and Problems of Interpretation (2005); Popular Arabic Narratives: Cultural Representation and Interpretation (2014); Polemical Discourse in Arab Culture: Interpretative Approaches (2014); and the five-volume Bahraini Folk Tales: A Thousand and One Tales, A Collective Documentation Project (2019). She has co-authored several edited anthologies and contributed five books to the Wells of Arabic Poetry project published by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre.
Laila Hyewon Baek is an assistant professor and head of the Department of Korean and Arabic Languages at the Graduate School of Translation (GSIT) at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in South Korea. She holds MA and PhD degrees in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Jordan. She has translated a number of Arabic novels, including The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant by Sahar Khalifeh; The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi (IPAF 2013 winner); My Early Life by Sultan Al-Qasimi; and The Mu’allaqat for Millennials by Kevin Blankinship and Hatem Alzahrani. She has several published academic papers, including The Transformation of Narrative Discourse in Arabic Literature After the 1967 Defeat (2022); and Problematics of the Self and the Other and Their Metaphorical Manifestations in The Bamboo Stalk (2022).
Shakir Nouri is an Iraqi journalist, novelist and translator. He obtained a BA degree in English Literature from the University of Baghdad in 1972 and returned to his hometown to work as a secondary school English teacher for four years. In 1977, he emigrated to Paris, where he remained until 2004. Whilst there, he obtained an MA in Media from the École Supérieure des Hautes Études, a BTS degree in Cinematography from Louis Lumière Institute and a PhD in Cinema and Theatre from the Sorbonne University. He has worked as a cultural correspondent for several Iraqi and Arab newspapers and magazines, and at Monte Carlo Radio and the Sorbonne University. He currently works in journalism, media, and as a university teacher in Dubai. He won the Ibn Battuta Award for Travel Literature for his book A Residence Permit in the Tower of Babel: Paris Diaries (2013). He is the author of numerous novels, non-fiction books, and translations into Arabic from English and French. His ninth novel Khatun Baghdad (2016), about explorer Gertrude Bell, won the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel in the published novel category in 2017.
About the prize
- 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)
2025: The Prayer of Anxiety by Mohamed Samir Nada (Egypt)
- 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, FRSE, FRCPE(Hon), Emeritus Professor of Modern 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; Will Forrester, Head of Literature Programmes at English PEN, Director of Untold Narratives, an Independent Expert for Creative Europe, and a Trustee of the Poetry Translation Centre; Michel S. Moushabeck, Founder and President of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., writer, editor, and musician, USA; 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.
- Reflecting its mission to increase the international reach of Arabic fiction, recent winning IPAF novels which have been published or are forthcoming in English include Basim Khandaqji’s A Mask, the Colour of the Sky (winner 2024, anticipated publication in 2026 from Europa Editions), Zahran Alqasmi’s The Water Diviner (winner 2023, forthcoming publication by Hoopoe), and Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table (winner 2022, forthcoming publication by HarperVia). IPAF 2025 novels which are forthcoming in English include Haneen Al-Sayegh’s The Women’s Covenant (2025 shortlisted, anticipated publication by Interlink in 2026), Nadia Najar’s The Touch of Light (2025 shortlisted, forthcoming publication by ELF Publishing in 2026), and Iman Humaydan’s Songs for the Darkness (2025 longlisted, to be published by Interlink in 2026).
- 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 in Jordan, at the Shoman Foundation in January 2025, followed by a second edition in October 2025. These workshops aim to develop the skills of professionals in the Arab publishing world and encourage excellence in the industry.
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, and was originally mentored by the Booker Prize Foundation in London.
About the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre
The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, established under a directive from HH the UAE President, as part of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, works to support Arabic language development and modernisation through comprehensive strategies and frameworks, enrich the scientific, educational, cultural and creative contributions of the Arabic language, promote Arabic language proficiency and cultural understanding, and support Arab talents in the fields of writing, translation, publishing, scientific research, arts, content creation, and organising book fairs. The Centre works to realise its foundational vision through dedicated programmes, human expertise, and meaningful partnerships with 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 11th – 20th April 2026.
[RJ1]Have updated to the latest version. Please do confirm this is correct.
[m2]Yes this is the latest one.