The Sheikh Zayed Book Award, organized by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, has announced the winners of its 19th awards program across eight categories. This year’s winners hail from seven countries around the world, including the U.K., Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco and the UAE.
This year's awards received more than 4,000 submissions from 75 countries. The winners will be celebrated at an April 28 award ceremony during the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, with each receiving prize money of 750,000 UAE dirhams ($204,198) and the Cultural Personality of the Year receiving one million UAE dirhams ($272,264).
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has received the Cultural Personality of the Year award for his “cosmopolitan literary sensibilities...and his ability to assimilate shared influences from around the world,” which have won him “a significant following in the Arab world,” said the award committee.
“Receiving the Sheikh Zayed Book Award from the United Arab Emirates comes as both a great surprise and an immense honor to me,” said Murakami in a statement. “Arabic is a language with a long and rich storytelling tradition, and it is a great honor for me that my books have been translated and are being read in Arab countries. I believe that stories are a universal language. It is my sincere hope that by sharing good stories, people can connect with each other and that this can become a force, even if only a small one, that moves the world towards peace.”
Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat took home the Literature award for Hind, or the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, and The Phantom of Sabiba by Moroccan writer Latifa Labsir was named the winning book in the Children’s Literature category.
Arab Literature in Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by Andrew Peacock, a history professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, received the award in the Arab Culture in Other Languages category, and Orosius, an English translation by Italian scholar Marco di Branco of Kitāb Hurūshiyūsh, the Arabic version of Paulus Orosius’s Seven Books of Histories Against the Pagans, was named the winner in the Translation category.
In the Editing of Arabic Manuscripts category, the winning book was News of Women by Iraqi scholar and editor Rasheed Alkhayoun, and in the Contribution to the Development of Nations category, Mohamed Bashari's The Right to Strive: Perspectives on Muslim Women’s Rights was named the winner. Finally, Said Laouadi received the award in the Literary and Art Criticism category for Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arabic Heritage.
“This year’s outstanding laureates exemplify the Award’s strategic impact, spanning diverse disciplines and demonstrating how literature and scholarship transcend borders to create a shared global dialogue,” said Ali bin Tamim, Secretary-General of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, in a statement. “We look forward to celebrating these exceptional voices at the Award Ceremony in April.”
