Sheikh Zayed Book Awards announced

The winners of the 13th Sheikh Zayed Book Award were presented recently. The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is presented annually to outstanding writers, intellectuals, publishers and emerging talents whose writing and translation in the humanities field enriches Arab intellectual, cultural, literary and social life.

Moroccan writer and novelist Bensalem Himmich’s autobiography The Self – Between Existence and Creation won the ‘Literature’ category award, while author Hussain Almutawaa from Kuwait won the ‘Children’s Literature’ category award for his novel I Dream of Being a Concrete Mixer. Algerian scholar Dr. Abderrezak Belagrouz won the ‘Young Author’ category for his book The Essence of Values and the Freedom of Social Concepts.

In the ‘Literary and Art Criticism’ category, scholar Dr. Charbel Dagher from Lebanon won the award for his book Contemporary Arabic Poetry – the prose. For the ‘Arab Culture in Other Languages’ category, British academic and researcher Philip F. Kennedy won the award for his book Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition, while the UAE’s Arab Centre for Geographic Literature – Irtiyad al-Afaq won the award category ‘Publishing and Technology’.

In his opening remarks at the ceremony, Abdullah Majed Al-Ali, executive director of the National Library Sector for DCT Abu Dhabi, reminded the audience that 2019 is “The Year of Tolerance” in the United Arab Emirates and that books and reading make great contributions to this universal value.