International Prize for Arabic Fiction

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Azher Jirjees: Writing the Country That Lives In Him

Last month, International Prize for Arabic Fiction judges announced that Iraqi writer Azher Jirjees had been shortlisted for the 2025 prize for his The Valley of the Butterflies, a novel set in Baghdad between 1999 and 2024 that tells the story of Aziz Awad, a government archivist who loses his job and struggles to keep his small family alive. Here, Jirjees talks about the power of satire, writing in exile, the Iraqi literary scene, and about how he and other Iraqi writers wanted to make “our voices heard, mine and those of my generation, who had lived through the ordeal from beginning to end.”

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From Mauritania to the IPAF Shortlist

Last month, International Prize for Arabic Fiction judges announced that Mauritanian writer Ahmed Vall Dine had been shortlisted for the 2025 prize for his Danshmand, a fictionalized biography of the renowned scholar Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Vall Dine talks about his journey as a writer, the challenges that face Mauritanian writers, and why “any writer who takes on the challenge of portraying a historical Muslim scholar is actually fortunate.”

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