Here, Taissier Khalaf talks about The Andalusian Messiah, shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The novel follows Gonzalez’s quest for identity after his Morisco mother’s execution in 1592 Andalusia. The author digs into “secrets and mysteries” of “neglected margins” and reflects on his literary journey.
Mohamed Samir Nada talks about his dystopian novel Prayer of Anxiety, which won the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
“But I didn’t decide to avoid setting The White Line of Night in Kuwait so that I could write freely and refer to anyone or anything without getting into trouble. Censorship is not exclusive to Kuwait; it is a global issue and it still exists in reality and practice even in the countries that theoretically nullified it.”
“History is important with regard to the novel, as is philosophy, for example, but in the end, it is nothing more than a tool, a means that the novel harnesses to serve artistic, aesthetic, and humanist purposes.”
“When the war began in Sarajevo I was a child. I was in southern Algeria then. We sang songs in school about the children of Sarajevo, and we saw pictures of what was happening there on TV.”
“I learned to read and write late. I grew up in Saudi Arabia—which is where we migrated because of the war in Eritrea—without official papers, so I couldn’t find a school to accept me, despite all the efforts of my mother, who went around to the schools in Jeddah to no avail.”
“My decision to write about that relationship was based in my conviction that Algerian Jews were an integral part of social, historical, and cultural elements; they spoke the same languages (Algerian, in Arabic or Amazigh dialects). They wore the same traditional clothing. They prepared the same foods. And they shared what was made. They played the same music. They sang the same songs. Only the two religions were different.”
