The International Prize for Arabic Fiction announced yesterday that “Prayer of Anxiety,” authored by Mohamed Samir Nada, has won the award for 2025. The selection committee chose this novel from a competitive pool of 124 submissions, recognizing it as the outstanding work published between July 2023 and June 2024.
Mona Baker, the chair of the judging panel, revealed the winning title at an event held in Abu Dhabi. As part of the prize, Mohamed Samir Nada receives a cash award of $50,000, while the other five finalists each earn $10,000.
She commented, “‘Prayer of Anxiety’ won because it successfully transforms anxiety into a profound aesthetic and intellectual experience that resonates with the reader and awakens urgent existential questions. Mohamed Samir Nada artfully blends multiple voices and symbolic narration with captivating poetic language, making the reading experience a sensory exploration where expression meets silence, and truth intersects with illusion.
The fictional setting of Naj’ al-Manasi transcends its identity as a village in Upper Egypt, symbolizing communities trapped by fear and power, adding layers that reach beyond geography to touch on the universal and communal aspects of humanity.”
Yasser Suleiman, the chair of the board of trustees for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, remarked, “‘Prayer of Anxiety’ is a remarkable novel in its structure, captivating in style, enchanting through its lyrical language, and engaging in its open themes, collectively positioning it as a future classic of Arabic literature. The narrative of the novel is framed by the events of the 1967 war and the subsequent decade, creating a world steeped in dystopian despair, encapsulated within the landscape of ‘Naj’ al-Manasi,’ which perfectly reflects its essence.”
Alongside “Prayer of Anxiety,” the shortlist for the 2025 award also includes works by Ahmed Fal al-Din (Mauritania), Azhar Jurgis (Iraq), Taysir Khalaf (Syria), Haneen Al-Saigh (Lebanon), and Nadia Najjar (UAE).
Mohamed Samir Nada resides in Cairo, where he serves as the financial manager for a tourism project. He has published several articles in various Arabic newspapers and online platforms, and his previous works include the novel “Kingdom of Malika” released in 2016, and “Whisper of the Walls” in 2021. This marks the first time Nada has been shortlisted for the prize, as well as the first occasion since 2009 that an Egyptian author has received the award. The novel is published by Miskilani Publications.