Doha -

The Cultural Village Foundation, Katara, announced today, Wednesday, the winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction in its seventh session, which is held remotely, for the second year in a row, under the supervision of the Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Science (ALECSO).

The seventh session of the award was marked by the registration of the largest number of participations since its launch in 2014, as the number of participants reached 2321, an increase of 4.5% over the previous session, in which the number of participants reached 2,220 participation. to share.

The winners in the published Arabic novels category were Habib Al-Salmi from Tunisia for his novel “Longing for the Neighbor”, Ahmed Al-Qarmlawy from Egypt for his novel “The Heirs of Al Sheikh”, and Fajr Yaqoub from Palestine for his novel “Lazy Hours - Diary of Asylum”, as well as Ayman Rajab Taher From Egypt for his novel “The Camel”, and Nader Manhal Haj Omar from Palestine for his novel “Cities of Boredom.” Each prize is worth $60,000, in addition to translating the winning novels into English.

Winners for the category of published Arabic novels (Katara)

In the unpublished novels category, Etidal Najeeb Al-Shoufi from Syria won for her novel “The Delirium of Places,” Ghaid Al Gharb from Iraq for her novel “Sukrat: Psalms of Blood,” and Younis O’Ali from Morocco for his novel “Ahlas, a painful memory of the past,” as well as Walid Ben Ahmed from Tunisia for his novel “The Qardash,” and Mohamed Abdullah Al-Hadi from Egypt for his novel “The Country is a Flaming Straw.” Each prize is worth $30,000, and the winning works will be printed and translated into English.

Winners for the Unpublished Arabic Novels Category (Katara)

5 critics, Ahmed Adel Al-Qadabi from Egypt for his study “Narrative representation: a foundational study”, won the category of studies concerned with research and novel criticism, and Reda Jawadi from Tunisia for his study “The Plastic Architecture in the Arab Novelist Achievement: The Dam and the Beggar as a Model”, and Muhammad Al-Dahi. From Morocco for his study “The Power of Articulation in Contemporary Arab Novelist Discourse”, and Mamdouh Farraj Al-Nabi from Egypt for his study “Against the Novel… The Geography of Literary Texts”, and Dr.

Yahya bin Al-Walid from Morocco for his study “Mirrors of Urbanization and Hybridity in the New Arab Novel (Morocco… an example).”

Winners for the Studies and Research Category for Narrative Evaluation and Criticism (Katara)

In the Boys category, Al-Hanouf Muhammad Al-Wahaimed from Saudi Arabia won for her novel “The Land of Yoshar”, Faisal Muhammad Abdullah Al-Ansari from Qatar for his novel “When the Ogres Return”, Omar Sufi Muhammad from Egypt for his novel “The Tale of a Lonely Bird”, and Majdi Younis from Egypt for his novel “The Runaways and the Green Society,” and Mounira Al-Daraoui from Tunisia for her novel “Rosalia the Lioness of the Mountains.” Each prize is worth $10,000, which will be printed and published.

In the published Qatari novel category, Shamma Shaheen Al-Kuwari won for her novel "In My Memory is a Place".

The Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction is an annual award launched by the Katara Cultural Village Foundation at the beginning of 2014. The Foundation manages it, provides support, and supervises it completely through a committee to manage the award that has been appointed for this purpose.

The award aims to consolidate the presence of distinguished Arab novels at the Arab and international levels, and to encourage and appreciate creative Arab novelists to move towards broader horizons of creativity and excellence, which will lead to raising the level of interest and interest in reading the Arabic novel and increasing cultural and cognitive awareness.

The 2021 award witnessed a large participation compared to previous versions (Al-Jazeera archive)

The Katara Award is committed to upholding the values ​​of independence, transparency and integrity during the selection process of the nominees, translating the winners' works into English and French, publishing and marketing unpublished novels, as well as opening the door to competition for publishing houses and novelists alike.

Katara seeks for the award to become a new creative platform in the history of the Arab novel, with which it sets out towards the world, and a constant incentive to promote Arab novelist creativity and keep pace with the global literary and cultural movement, and to contribute through this award to cultural communication with the other through translation into other languages.

The award focuses on supporting the Arab cultural scene and launching a real dialogue that contributes to strengthening cultural coexistence on the world level, expressing the collective desire to strive for intellectual cultural diversity in the Arab world and the formation of a generation that is proud of its Arab identity, and opening the door for great and young innovators to produce distinguished.

The total prizes for the "Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction" - in its various branches - are $635,000, of which $300,000 is the total prizes for the published novels category, where each of the five winners receives a financial prize of $60,000, and for the unpublished novels category. 5 prizes totaling $150,000, with a value of $30,000, are awarded to each winner.