International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, writers and translators discuss the dissemination of the winning novels in the west, and the political landscape in which the work is written.

This event also salutes this year's winner, Rabee Jaber, with readings of his novel 'The Druze of Belgrade'.

Jonathan Wright is a British journalist and literary translator. He studied Arabic, Turkish and Islamic civilization at St John's College, Oxford. His English translation of Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan was published in April 2012.

Judge of the 2012 IPAF, Maudie Bitar is a Lebanese journalist and literary critic of Arabic and Western literature. She writes a column on Western literature for Al-Hayat newspaper.

Professor Marie-Thérèse Abdel-Messih is a trustee of the IPAF. She is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at the Universities of Cairo, and Kuwait (on secondment). She has written many books including A Transcultural Reading of Literature (1997, 2004) and National Culture - Global or International Options (2006, 2009). She is also a judge for the State Fiction and Arts Prizes, the Writer's Union Fiction Prize and the Sawiris Fiction Prize