International Prize for Arabic Fiction Announces 2025 Shortlist

FEBRUARY 19, 2025 — At an event held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt — and which celebrated Alexandrian and Egyptian authors — translator and scholar Mona Baker announced the shortlist of this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).

Baker, this year’s judging chair, told the audience in Alexandria and online that six novels had been shortlisted for this year’s prize:

Danshmand by Mauritanian novelist and journalist Ahmed Fal Al Din

The Valley of the Butterflies by Iraqi author Azher Jirjees

The Andalusian Messiah by Palestinian-Syrian novelist Taissier Khalaf

The Prayer of Anxiety by Egyptian author Mohamed Samir Nada

The Touch of Light by Emirati author Nadia Najar

The Women’s Charter by Lebanese poet and novelist Haneen Al-Sayegh

The news of Egyptian novelist Mohamed Samir Nada’s shortlisting was met with whistles and applause.

Baker was joined by the other judges — Said Bengrad, Maryam Al Hashimi, Bilal Orfali, and Sampsa Peltonen — as well as the IPAF’s Chair of Trustees Yasir Suleiman, the prize administrator Fleur Montanaro, and Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Professor Ahmed Zayed.

Baker, the chair of judges, said that this year’s shortlisted novels were notable for “focus on the humanity of their protagonists,” saying:

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.

Ahmed Fal Al Din is the first Mauritanian author to be shortlisted in the IPAF’s eighteen-year history. Although one of Fal Al Din’s works of nonfiction has been published in English translation by Dar Arab (In Gaddafi’s Clutches, translated by Nicole Fares), and another is forthcoming (The Rock of the Land, translated by Mbarek Sryfi), none of his novels have been published in English translation.

Shortlistee Azher Jirjees’s previously IPAF-longlisted novel, At Rest in the Cherry Orchard, was translated by Jonathan Wright and published by Banipal Books.

The winner of this year’s IPAF is set to be announced on April 24, 2025 in a ceremony which be held in Abu Dhabi and also streamed online.