Reem Bassiouney Wins 2024 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for her ‘Fatimid Trilogy’ – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY
APRIL 4, 2024 — Organizers of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award announced their 2024 winners today. The list was led by the high-profile literature category, which went to Reem Bassiouney’s fast-paced, fights-and-romance-filled historical novel, Al Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy.
The sweeping historical three-parter travels back in time to medieval Egypt. Organizers write, in a prepared statement, that Bassiouney “seeks to shed light on the Egyptian character with narratives that intertwine poetry, architecture, and mythology, while underscoring the human dimension. The author works to construct the narrative of historical and social development in Egypt in that era, using a narrative tone that aligns with the nature of that extended historical period and its intellectual and social dimensions.”
The trilogy has been translated by Roger Allen and is forthcoming from Dar Arab in the UK.
Bassiouney has several novels in translation, including her popular Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy, translated by Roger Allen, which was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award in 2023. Her
Bassiouney’s Fatimid Trilogy had been shortlisted last month along with Hassan Dawood’s A Chance for One Last Love and Jalal Bargas’s The Duduk’s Whisper.
Several other SZBA awards were announced today: Tunisian scholar Dr. Houssem Eddine Chachia took the prize in the Young Author category for his work The Morisco Landscape Narratives of Expulsion in Modern Spanish Thought. The Editing of Arabic Manuscripts category went to Egyptian scholar Dr. Mustafa Said. The Translation category was awarded to Tunisian translator Ahmed Somai for his translation of Giambattista Vico’s La Scienza Nuova, and Frank Griffel won in the Arab Culture in Other Languages category for his book The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam, while the Publishing and Technology category went to China-based Bayt Elhekma for Creative Industries.
Information about all the winners is available at the SZBA website.
