Palestine's Habayeb wins 2017 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

CAIRO - 12 December 2017: The American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press) announced on Monday that Palestinian writer Huzama Habayeb won the 2017 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for her powerful work "Velvet" described by the judges as "a new kind of Palestinian novel".

She also won USD 1,000 as well as translating and publishing her novel and distributing it all over the world.

The ceremony was attended by a number of intellectuals as well as Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s daughter Umm Kulthum.

Habayeb is a Palestinian novelist who has won multiple awards. Upon graduating from Kuwait University in 1987, she pursued careers in journalism, teaching, and translation before she eventually started to write professionally as a published author.