13th Sheikh Zayed Book Award to stop receiving nominations Oct. 1

CAIRO – 16 August 2018: Sheikh Zayed Book Award will stop receiving nominations for its 13th edition on October 1.

The award, which started accepting nominations on May 10, consists of nine categories: Sheikh Zayed Award for the Best Contribution to the Development of the Country, Children’s Literature, Literature, Young Author, Translation, Art Criticism, Arabic Culture in Non-Arab Language, and Publishing and Cultural Technologies.

The award is not granted to works that have previously won international or Arab awards. Egyptian author Ahmed al-Qarmalawi was one of the winners of the 12th edition of the international Sheikh Zayed Book Award.

Born in Cairo in 1978, Qarmalawi graduated from the Faculty of Construction Engineering at the American University in Cairo (AUC), and later went on to receive a master's degree from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His first novel, "Abbas First" was published in 2013.

He received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award under the Young Author category for his novel "Summer Rains" (Amtar Sayfiyyah) which was published by Cairo's Maktabat al-Dar al-Arabiyah lil-Kitab in 2017.

Aside from writing, Qarmalawi's hobbies also include oil, charcoal, and pastel painting as well as playing oud. Other winners of the award include Syrian novelist Khalil Sweileh, winner of the Literature Award for the novel "Remorse Test" (Ikhtibar al-Nadam), published in Beirut, 2017 by Nofal- Hachette Antoine. This book explores