The young Algerian author Saïd Khatibi has won one of the most prestigious awards for literature in Arabic: the 2023 Sheikh Zayed Book Award. The members of the jury selected Khatibi in the “young author” category for his Arabic-language novel Nehayat Al Sahra’a (The End of the Desert), published by Hachette Antoine in 2022.
The prizewinning work is a historical detective novel in line with trends in contemporary Arabic literature. It depicts the events and circumstances surrounding a murder in a small village in the Algerian Sahara in 1988.
Organized yearly by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre in the UAE, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the Arab world. The goal of the coveted award is to promote and honour intellectuals, scientists, authors, translators, publishers and institutions that have made significant contributions to literature, the social sciences, culture and modern knowledge and understanding of the Arab world.
“Given the great number of applicants in the ‘young author’ category his year, I extend my warmest congratultaions to Saïd Khatibi, who won in this category with his novel Nehayat Al Sahra'a, as well as to his publisher Hachette Antoine,” said Pierre Leroy, Chairman & CEO of Hachette Livre. “This is exciting news for the Hachette Antoine and Hachette Livre teams, and I’m very pleased to have us be a part of the extraordinary energy of contemporary Arabic literature.”
Hachette Antoine is a major Lebanese publisher and has partnered with Hachette Livre since 2009. It publishes in Arabic for countries in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and North Africa. Based in Beirut, Hachette Antoine publishes books in a wide range of segments, including fiction, children’s fiction, textbooks, workbooks, lifestyle and how-to, and self-learning.