News I Resist the River's Course, International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Said Khatibi

Said Khatibi’s ‘I Resist the River’s Course’ Wins 2026 IPAF

April 9, 2026

APRIL 9, 2026 — Algerian novelist Said Khatibi’s I Resist the River’s Course was today named the winner of the 2026 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) by the prize’s judging chair Mohamed Elkadhi. Although the winner is usually announced in Abu Dhabi, on the eve of the city’s international book fair, this year’s fair was postponed indefinitely, and so the announcement was made online.

You can read an excerpt from the novel, in Alex Elinson’s translation, on ArabLit, as well as a conversation with Khatibi about the Algerian crime novel.

Excerpts from the short films about each of the shortlisted titles were also shared during the announcement.

Khatibi’s novel chronicles half a century of Algerian history, from the Second World War to the early 1990s. As IPAF organizers write, the book follows a “renowned ophthalmologist and her husband, a doctor in charge of a hospital morgue, [who] 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.”

In the short film about his book, Khatibi said:

“The character of Aqeela in the novel not only attempts to save her patients by restoring their sight; she also strives to save a society by helping it see things as they truly are. Placing an investigation into a crime right at the beginning of the novel serves as a gateway to exploring and understanding a greater crime, a societal ill, spanning several decades.”

During the announcement, judging chair Mohamed Elkadhi said that it had been a unanimous decision. He praised the book’s “thematic depth and formal originality,” saying it was “intellectually ambitious and formally assured.” The book, he said, balanced the demands of a complex plot and in-depth psychological analysis of the characters, saying that it did not merely describe the past but “sketches outlines for the future.”

Elkadhi was joined, on this year’s panel of judges, by 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.

This win comes just three years after Khatibi won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his End of the Sahara, which came out two months ago, in Alex Elinson’s English translation, from Bitter Lemon.

The other five shortlisted titles were: 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, and Siesta Dream by Amin Zaoui.

The other shortlisted books featured a wide range of styles and concerns, from Abdulatif’s post-human era; to Barakat’s lonely and alienated Beirut; to Ibrahim’s abuse, crime, and punishment; to Jubaili’s Gilgamesh-inspired historical explorations; to Zaoui’s portrait of women’s courage in the face of repression.

Several of this year’s shortlisted writers have previous work already available in English translation. Najwa Barakat’s Mister N was shortlisted for the 2023 EBRD Literature Prize in Luke Leafgren’s translation, and also won the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation; and Diaa Jubaili’s collection of short-short stories, No Windmills in Basra, winner of the Almultaqa Prize for the Short Story appeared in Chip Rossetti’s translation.

The longlist — announced back in December — was chosen from a total of 137 submissions.