Sheikh Zayed Book Award
Annual UAE literary award honoring writers, intellectuals and publishers who contribute to Arab cultural, literary and social life.
- Established
- 2007
- Organizer
- Board of Trustees of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award
- Category
- Research, Translation, and Scholarship
- Selection Method
- Recommendation
- Target
- Professional
- Frequency
- 1 per year
- Application Deadline
- around September
- Announcement Period
- around April–May
- Status
- Active
Description
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is an annual literary prize presented in the United Arab Emirates to authors, intellectuals and publishers whose works and scholarly publications have contributed to Arab cultural, literary and social life. Named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the award held its first session in 2007. With a total prize pool reported at AED 7,000,000 it is one of the world's richest literary awards. The award spans multiple categories (Literature, Translation, Arabic Culture in Other Languages, Cultural Personality of the Year, Children's Literature, Young Author, publishing/technology categories, etc.). In 2018 the Award launched a translation grant to encourage translation of Arabic literature into other languages.
Prize
- Main Prize
- Total prize pool AED 7,000,000. Cultural Personality of the Year: AED 1,000,000. Other main category winners receive substantial cash prizes (historically reported around USD 200,000 each, amounts vary).
- Cash Prize
- 7,000,000 AED
- Cultural Personality of the Year: 1,000,000 AED
- Other category winners: historically reported around $200,000 each (amounts vary by year and category)
- Translation grant / translation funding (launched 2018) to support publication of shortlisted or winning works
Selection
Selection Process
| Stage | Judges | Pass Rate | Announcement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nomination / Submission | Nominations and submissions considered according to official rules (publishers, cultural institutions and authorised nominators). | — | Nominations accepted per award timetable; longlist/shortlist information published on official site. |
| Shortlist selection | Category-specific expert panels and juries review submitted/nominated works to create shortlists. | — | Shortlists are announced publicly via the award's official website and press releases. |
| Final judging | Final winners selected by the juries in consultation with the Award's Board of Trustees. | — | Winners are announced via official website, press release and at public award events/ceremonies. |
| Award presentation | — | Prizes are presented at official ceremonies or recognition events; details posted on the official site. |
Criteria
- Contribution to Arab cultural, literary and social life
- Literary merit and originality
- Scholarly quality and research rigour (for academic categories)
- Translation quality and fidelity (for Translation and Arabic Culture in Other Languages categories)
- Cultural significance and impact
Related Awards
- Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant (launched 2018) — translation funding for shortlisted and winning works
Official Resources
https://www.zayedaward.ae/Past Winners
The novel follows Hanadi, whose appearance changes after acromegaly, and the mother who cannot reconcile herself to her daughter, tracing rejection and attachment across Beirut and Paris. It reflects on beauty norms, self-image, and the unsettling drift between memory and exile.
A change in appearance quietly unravels family memory and self-image.
Seen through Hiba's eyes, the novel follows her autistic brother Raji's way of experiencing the world and the misunderstandings that arise at home and at school. It emphasizes empathy, imagination, and the need to understand difference with care.
Through an older sister's voice, her younger brother's world slowly comes into focus.
This scholarly study examines the spread of Arabic literary culture in early modern Southeast Asia through manuscripts and other little-studied texts. It brings into focus intellectual exchange with the Middle East, the development of Islam and Sufism, and the relationship between Arabic and Malay literary traditions.
Manuscript fragments are used to rethink the reach of Arabic culture across Southeast Asia.
This critical edition and translation revisits the Arabic version of Orosius's history through English translation and commentary. It shows how a Latin historical work was reworked in the Arabic and Islamic world, and how classical knowledge was received and transformed there.
It traces how a Latin classic was reimagined in the Arabic world.
This annotated critical edition revisits the rare work attributed to Usama ibn Munqidh and re-evaluates the traditions and records it preserves about women. It restores the text as a source of literary and historical value.
It rereads fragile records of women through careful scholarly editing.
Drawing on Islamic jurisprudence and social experience, the book asks how a Muslim woman's labor and contribution to family wealth should be recognized. It organizes contemporary debate around economic justice within the family and its legal grounding.
It reconsiders, through law and ethics, how women's labor supports family wealth.
The book reads the relationship between food and rhetoric in Arab heritage across poetry, proverbs, and stories. It shows how dining, food vocabulary, and literary expression are bound together in cultural imagination.
It explores how the language of the table has woven Arab cultural memory.
A Spanish cultural institution that promotes exchange with the Arab world and works to advance Arabic language and culture across Europe and Latin America.
An Egyptian musician and composer whose long career has left a lasting mark on the Arab region's musical and screen culture.
A Saudi scholar and critic whose work in literary criticism, women's studies, poetry, and critical thinking has helped reshape Arab critical discourse since the mid-1980s.
Written as children’s literature, the book gently explores acceptance, coexistence, and the value of difference. Its imaginative shape encourages an open view of the world around us.
A gentle story about the importance of acceptance.
An intellectual work that reconsiders basic ideas of faith, social consciousness, and religious belonging in order to reframe modern understandings of Islam. Its reformist outlook encourages ethical reflection rather than polemic.
It reframes religion and society as a question of thought, not just institutions.
A French translation of an Arabic study on Ibn Rushd that organizes the core of Arab thought around the relationship between law and philosophy. Through translation and annotation, it extends the ground for comparative intellectual history.
Translation makes the link between law and philosophy in Arab thought more visible.
A novel by a Lebanese poet-writer set in an Arab village, tracing a father-son relationship shaped by violence and authoritarian pressure. Its lyrical voice turns social critique into a layered fable.
Father-son rupture and violence unfold as a village fable.
A critical study that examines the possibilities of literary fiction through references to myth and philosophical debate. It probes how imagination works in literature from both theoretical and practical angles.
It reconsiders the power of fiction from both theory and example.
A research book that traces the movement from thinking about nature to the nature of thought through the intersection of philosophy after Kant and biology. By linking conceptual history with the history of science, it reconsiders the frame of modern thought.
It rethinks the shape of thought at the point where philosophy meets biology.
A sweeping study that analyzes the history, ideology, and social impact of political religious groups from multiple angles. It reframes the conflict between religion and politics as an intellectual struggle rather than a military one.
A major study that rereads political religious movements as intellectual history.
An Arabic translation of a classic work on the relation between language, thought, and signs. It is positioned as a foundational book for thinking about how meaning is produced through abstract theory.
A classic of semantics reread in Arabic.
A literary autobiography that traces the author’s career alongside political, social, and cultural change. It speaks openly about the origins of his work and the making of his fiction, while evoking the literary density of Alexandria.
A literary autobiography that speaks frankly about the making of fiction.
A theoretical work that revisits the basic framework of Arab literary criticism. It organizes questions of literature and criticism within an Arab intellectual context and lays out a scholarly foundation for debate.
A theoretical book about the foundations of Arab literary criticism.
A scholarly study that traces the history of the concept of angle and its measurement from Euclid to Arabic science. It reads Greek and Arabic texts closely and reconnects the histories of mathematics and philosophy.
A study of the concept of angle across the histories of mathematics and philosophy.
A sweeping study that follows the idea of evolution beyond biology into social, cultural, linguistic, and economic history.
Human evolution is reconsidered across multiple fields of study.
Thirty poems on nature, family, school, play, and imagination introduce children to the rhythm and sound of Arabic verse.
Gentle language and poetic rhythm open a child’s senses and imagination.
A critical study that maps post-colonial discourse in contemporary Arab criticism from both theoretical and practical angles.
The book presents a new horizon for criticism as a theoretical map.
A historical study of how lodging, trade, and travel institutions developed across the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
The history of inns, trade, and travel becomes a way to reread the interconnected Mediterranean world.
A man raised in an Egyptian village travels through Ismailia and Vienna across four decades, moving through love, music, and exile.
A life that begins in the village and expands across cities and continents is told with quiet intensity.
A major work of history and archaeology that traces how ancient Babylon has been imagined and reconstructed in the modern era.
The book follows modern imagination around the question of “real Babylon.”
A religious and historical study of the political establishment of Sufism in Egypt.
A religious and historical study of the political establishment of Sufism in Egypt.
A linguistics study of time in Arabic language, its structure, and its significance.
A linguistics study of time in Arabic language, its structure, and its significance.
An encyclopedia-style reference work on animals.
An encyclopedia-style reference work on animals.
A design theory book that addresses philosophy, theory, and application.
A design theory book that addresses philosophy, theory, and application.
A coming-of-age manga about Sultan, a 15-year-old Emirati boy, and the falconry contest Gold Ring.
A coming-of-age manga about Sultan, a 15-year-old Emirati boy, and the falconry contest Gold Ring.
An introductory guide to comparative cultural criticism.
An introductory guide to comparative cultural criticism.
A Jamal al-Ghitani novel grounded in Egyptian history and symbolism.
A Jamal al-Ghitani novel grounded in Egyptian history and symbolism.
A reflective work that uses the metaphor of light to explore knowledge and spirituality.
A reflective work that uses the metaphor of light to explore knowledge and spirituality.
An overview of contemporary trends in translation theory.
An overview of contemporary trends in translation theory.
A sociological study of democracy in the Arabian Gulf and its political structures.
A sociological study of democracy in the Arabian Gulf and its political structures.
A linguistic and critical study of terminology in contemporary Arab discourse.
A linguistic and critical study of terminology in contemporary Arab discourse.
An Ibrahim al-Koni novel set against the Sahara and nomadic culture.
An Ibrahim al-Koni novel set against the Sahara and nomadic culture.
A theoretical work on the relationship between causality, concept, and architectural form.
A theoretical work on the relationship between causality, concept, and architectural form.
A general sociology text that presents the field’s core concepts and approaches.
A general sociology text that presents the field’s core concepts and approaches.
A study of international relations from the clash-of-civilizations debate to a humanized civilizational order.
A study of international relations from the clash-of-civilizations debate to a humanized civilizational order.
An illustrated retelling of the Sufi allegory in which birds journey to Qaf Mountain.
An illustrated retelling of the Sufi allegory in which birds journey to Qaf Mountain.
A historical novel about Emir Abdelkader’s resistance to the French occupation of Algeria in the nineteenth century.
A historical novel about Emir Abdelkader’s resistance to the French occupation of Algeria in the nineteenth century.
A landmark survey of Indian art that moves from architecture, sculpture, and painting to dance, music, and literature.
A landmark survey of Indian art that moves from architecture, sculpture, and painting to dance, music, and literature.
A translated work recognized for bridging French and Arabic literary cultures.
A translated work recognized for bridging French and Arabic literary cultures.
A study of Arab political leadership and democracy through the prophetic and caliphal model.
A study of Arab political leadership and democracy through the prophetic and caliphal model.
An architectural history study of Ottoman mosques and their structural development.
An architectural history study of Ottoman mosques and their structural development.
A children’s series that combines images and text to make scientific topics accessible.
A children’s series that combines images and text to make scientific topics accessible.