The winners of the 20th Sheikh Zayed Book Award will be honoured on Wednesday at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, marking two decades of one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary and cultural prizes.
Launched in 2006, the award was created to recognise outstanding writing, translation and scholarship while promoting Arabic literature and greater cultural exchange. That ambition came with considerable financial weight. Winners in each competitive category receive Dh750,000 ($204,167), while the Cultural Personality of the Year receives Dh1 million ($272,222).
Ali bin Tamim, secretary general of both the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre and the award, described the 20th anniversary as a chance to consider how far it has developed.
“Marking the 20th anniversary of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award offers an opportunity to reflect on how a cultural initiative has evolved into a leading platform for recognising rigorous scholarship, creative writing, and intellectual contribution across the Arab world and beyond,” he said when this year’s winners were announced.
“Over the past two decades, the award has helped shape a vibrant literary and research landscape, supporting authors, translators, and publishers while encouraging the highest academic and creative standards.”
Here are 15 notable Sheikh Zayed Book Award-winning books spanning fiction, children’s literature, poetry, translation and scholarship that can be read in English.
Fiction and children’s literature
1. The End of the Sahara by Said Khatibi (2023)
Algerian novelist Said Khatibi won the Young Author award in 2023 for this crime novel set in the weeks leading up to the October 1988 riots that shook Algeria.
The killing of a nightclub singer is at the centre of the mystery, but the investigation also moves through social division, political unease and the secrets of those living through a tense period in Algeria.
Khatibi returned to a similar approach in Swimming Against the Tide, which won this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Beginning with a woman accused of poisoning her husband, the novel expands into half a century of Algerian history, from the Second World War and the Algerian War of Independence to the early 1990s.
2. The Lilac Girl by Ibtisam Barakat (2020)
Palestinian-American writer Ibtisam Barakat won the Children’s Literature Award in 2020 with a story inspired by Palestinian artist Tamam Al-Akhal.
Its young protagonist has been displaced from Jaffa and turns to painting as a way to hold on to the home she remembers. The book explores memory, loss, and displacement from a child’s perspective.
3. I Dream of Being a Concrete Mixer by Hussain Al Mutawaa (2019)
A young protagonist wants to become a concrete mixer rather than follow the path expected of him, raising questions about ambition, choice and what adults expect of children.
The book by Kuwaiti author Hussain Al Mutawaa won the Children’s Literature award in 2019. Speaking to The National about the craft of writing for young readers, Al Mutawaa said children’s literature can work on more than one level. “The story is at the heart, and the bigger issues are on top of each other.”
4. The Dinoraf by Hessa Al Mehairi (2018)
A dinosaur looking for creatures like himself is at the centre of Emirati writer Hessa Al Mehairi’s picture book, which won the Children’s Literature Award in 2018.
His journey introduces him to different animals before he finds a home among giraffes.
With a story about difference and coexistence, Al Mehairi became the first Emirati woman to win the award.
“Children’s literature [stories] are often universal,” she told The National. “It is also a great way to share with people our different cultures and show what we have in common.”
5. Hatless by Lateefa Buti (2017)
Kuwaiti author Lateefa Buti’s Hatless, winner of the Children’s Literature award in 2017, imagines a city where everyone is born wearing a hat that covers their face.
As a result, people grow accustomed to seeing and understanding only fragments of the world around them until one girl decides to remove hers.
The story centres on curiosity, conformity and independent thought.
6. After Coffee by Abdelrashid Mahmoudi (2014)
Egyptian writer Abdelrashid Mahmoudi won the Literature award in 2014 for a novel about Medhat, an Egyptian man whose life unfolds between Ismailia and Vienna in the 1940s.
Described by Mahmoudi as “a bit of a loser and a failure”, Medhat drifts through a series of relationships while struggling with love, disappointment and where he belongs. The novel is less about a single central event than about the accumulation of encounters and failures as he moves between Egypt and Europe.
Mahmoudi mixes dark humour and melancholy with classical Arabic narrative, Egyptian dialect, poetry, proverbs, songs and verses from the Quran.
“Our hero is torn between two women: an ideal woman he dreams of but can never get, and her sister who is available and he can get but doesn’t love,” Mahmoudi told The National. “The ending, in many ways, is a bit tragic, as we feel the confusion and the struggle of Medhat to do something right for once in his life, but does he? I leave that to you to decide.”
7. Gold Ring by Qais Sedki (2010)
Inspired by Japanese manga but set within Emirati culture, the graphic novel follows 15-year-old Sultan and his falcon as they enter a fictional competition that tests their skill and perseverance.
“The reason I set out to do this is to get children reading at a younger age, and to get them to associate something traditional with something cool, like manga,” Sedki said.
Poetry and biography
8. Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal (2021)
Egyptian poet and writer Iman Mersal explores the life and career of enigmatic Egyptian writer Enayat Al Zayyat, whose only novel, Love and Silence, appeared in 1967, four years after her death, in her 2021 Literature category winner Traces of Enayat.
Mersal first encountered Al Zayyat’s novel in 1993 and became interested in why both the author and her work had largely disappeared from literary history.
What follows is part biography, part literary investigation, as Mersal searches archives, homes and Cairo’s cultural history for traces of Al Zayyat’s life.
“It was important for me to tell Enayat’s story without making her representative of something, and without my speaking for her,” Mersal said.
“I wanted her to emerge through my journey towards her. The decision to tell the story of researching Enayat opened up many possibilities. Enayat and her life became the engine of the book, but even as the narrative circles closer around the mystery of her life, other characters and stories, present and past, spring up around her.”
9. Thirty Poems for Children by Jawdat Fakhreddine (2014)
Lebanese poet Jawdat Fakhreddine won the Children’s Literature award in 2015 for a collection that moves from everyday childhood to the natural world and the imagination.
The judges praised the work for its “simplicity in language and beauty of rhythms”, as well as its illustrations and the way the poems encourage children to observe the world around them.
Translation winners
10. Smorgasbords of Andalusi and Maghribi Dishes and Their Salutary Benefits, translated by Nawal Nasrallah (2026)
Iraqi-American food historian Nawal Nasrallah won the 2026 Translation award for bringing a 13th-century Andalusi and Maghrebi cookbook into English.
The surviving work contains a range of recipes and preparations showing the ingredients, cooking methods and eating habits of the medieval Western Islamic world.
Nasrallah’s edition also provides historical context and a glossary for some of the food, language and techniques in the manuscript.
11. Orosius: Seven Books of Histories Against the Pagans, translated by Marco Di Branco (2025)
Italian historian Marco Di Branco won the Translation award in 2025 for his work on the Arabic version of the fifth-century history
The book includes the surviving Arabic version, and an English translation and commentary explaining the text and how it came to circulate in Arabic during the medieval period.
12. Impostures by Al-Hariri, translated by Michael Cooperson (2021)
Written in the 12th century, Al-Hariri’s Maqamatfollows the trickster Abu Zayd through 50 stories as he travels across the medieval Middle East, repeatedly relying on disguise, eloquence and deception to get what he wants.
The difficulty in translating the book comes from Al-Hariri’s language, which moves between rhymed prose, wordplay and different registers.
Michael Cooperson, who won the Translation award in 2021, responds by giving each of the stories a different English style rather than forcing them into a single voice.
Non-fiction and scholarship
13. The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures by Muhsin Al-Musawi (2022)
Iraqi scholar Muhsin Al-Musawi won the Arab Culture in Other Languages award in 2022 for this study of how One Thousand and One Nights has been translated, adapted and reinterpreted around the world.
The book traces the influence of the Nights across literature, cinema, theatre, painting, music and digital culture, while also examining how translators and editors have changed the stories over time.
14. Imagining Babylon: The Modern Story of an Ancient City by Mario Liverani (2014)
Italian historian Mario Liverani looks at how Babylon has been excavated, reconstructed and interpreted, and how those interpretations have changed over time.
The book won the Arab Culture in Other Languages award in 2014.
Liverani told The National that he wanted to examine “how western countries imagine the cities and towns of the Orient”, questioning assumptions that had built up around ancient Middle Eastern history.
15. Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner (2013)
British writer and scholar Marina Warner examines the role of magic in One Thousand and One Nights, and the way its stories helped shape western literature and culture.
Winner of the Arab Culture in Other Languages award in 2013, the book traces the influence of the Nights through literature, theatre, film and art.
Warner described her ability to turn around the rigorous scholarship as “effortless, almost addictive entertainment”.
