With the growing interest in the U.S., this year’s U.S. Book Show will feature a panel discussion titled “Bringing the World to Your Door: A Spotlight on Arabic Literature and Culture.” Three panelists—2021 winners Tahera Qutbuddin and Michael Cooperson and 2022 winner Muhsin Jassim Al-Musawi—will discuss how, for centuries, Arabic literature and culture have influenced some of the most revered authors and thinkers in the West and why is it important that we continue to share works of this diverse culture around the world.

Professor Qutbuddin won her SZBA in the category of Arab Culture in Other Languages for her book Arabic Oration: Art and Function (Brill, 2019), which offers a comprehensive examination of oration in the Arabic language, with its unique cultural and artistic characteristics. This form of communication dates back to the pre-Islam oral tradition of Arabian Peninsula tribes and has undergone several phases of transformation over time until it has taken its modern, distinctive form, earning in the process a status as a genre of Arab heritage worthy of respect in its own right. When she won the SZBA in 2020, she was praised by the judges for her “exceptional familiarity with classical Arabic literature and her firm grasp on oral tradition studies and theories.” Qutbuddin’s passion for Arabic storytelling began in childhood. “My journey with Arabic literature,” she said at the time, “has taken me over several decades and three continents: Mumbai, where I grew up and first encountered Arabic literature through the lessons I took on the wisdom sayings of Imam Ali with my father, Syedna Khuzaima Qutbuddin, an eminent scholar of Islam; Cairo, where I dove into the Arabic and Islamic literary heritage at the local Ain Shams University; and Harvard University in the U.S., where I completed a PhD program and I honed my research skills.”

She added that she was delighted to have received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, as it “It raises the visibility of the important genre of classical Arabic oration, which forms the foundation of the Arabic literary tradition, and it raises the visibility of my work among readers in the West as well as readers in the Arabic-speaking world.”

Outbuddin is currently professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Chicago, but in 2023 will take up a new appointment as Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professorship in Arabic at Oxford University. “What led to the Arabic Oration book is in fact, earlier, around 10 years ago, I started working on a book about the sermons of Ali, and when I delved deep and tried to figure out the parameters of the genres of ‘Khatabha,’ I realized that no one has worked on this at all - the genre or idea of oration,” she said. Professor Qutbuddin serves on the editorial boards of several publishing series and journals, including NYU Abu Dhabi’s Library of Arabic Literature, which gives her a unique perspective on the work that is making it into print in America.

One book published in the NYU series is Professor Michael Cooperson’s Impostures by al-Hariri (NYU Press, 2020), which won a 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the translation category. Cooperson is currently a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the cultural history of early Islamic Iraq. His He credits time spent at New York University Abu Dhabi – and a “pristine” and clean office -- with enabling him to finish his work on the book. Winning the Sheikh Zayed Book Award also gave him room to work, in a manner of speaking. “Before it, my only workspace at home was a couch in my living room, where an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old equipped with toy bows and arrows used me for target practice,” he reports. “All the award money went toward buying a proper house, where I now have an office with a door.” He’s currently working a comprehensive history of Arabic literature supplemented with photographs to highlight archaeological sites, performances, and rules of assonance.

The third panelist is Iraqi-American academic Dr. Muhsin J. Al-Musawi, who won the 2022 SZBA in the category of Arabic Culture in Other Languages for his book The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures: Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Dr. Al-Musawi examines the enduring vogue of the Nights among writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and philosophers, from Marcel Proust to Walt Disney. He considers their translation and appropriation in the context of colonial legacies.

Dr. Al-Musawi is professor of classical and modern Arabic literature, comparative and cultural studies at Columbia University, New York. A renowned scholar and literary critic, his teaching and research interests span several periods and genres. Professor al-Musawi is the author of thirty-nine books (including six novels) and over sixty scholarly articles, most recently Arabic Disclosures: The Postcolonial Autobiographical Atlas (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022). He also wrote the Introduction and Notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics Edition of The Arabian Nights. Professor al-Musawi is the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature, the foremost academic journal in the field of Arabic literature. He is the recipient of the 2002 Owais Award in Literary Criticism, the 2018 Kuwait Prize in Arabic Language and Literature, and the 2022 King Faisal International Prize for Arabic Literature in English.

Of all the panelists, Professor Cooperson pershaps summarized the impact of the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards best when he described the impact they have had on his career --- and on the spread of Arabic culture. “Thanks to the SZBA, I've been invited to speak about Impostures at universities all over the world, including Cambridge (UK), Leiden, and Harvard, and met translators and scholars who share my enthusiasm for tackling impossible projects,” he said, adding, “Those who aren't Arabists have now heard of [the subject of my book,] al-Hariri, and the reviews in mainstream venues like the Times Literary Supplement and the Wall Street Journal suggest that he might finally achieve name recognition in English!”

The panel on Arabic Literature and Culture can be viewed here.