The winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, known as Arabic Booker, will be announced tonight – Tuesday 26 April – in a press conference at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

Six shortlisted authors are competing to win the prestigious prize worth $50,000, which was first awarded in 2008. The authors are Egyptian Mohamed Rabie, Moroccan Tareq Bakari, Palestinian Rabai Al-Madhoun, Palestinian Mahmoud Shukair, Syrian Shahla Ujayli, and Lebanese George Yaraq. The five runners up will receive $10,000.

The 2016 judging panel for this year, which was revealed on 9 February, are Amina Thiban (Chair), an Emirati poet and academic specialising in literature; Sayyed Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist and poet, who is currently editor of Al-Qahira newspaper; Mohammed Mechbal, a Moroccan academic and critic; Munir Mujić, a Bosnian academic, translator, and researcher; and Abdo Wazen, a Lebanese poet, critic and editor-in-chief of the cultural pages of Al-Hayat newspaper.

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction is an annual literary prize for prose fiction in Arabic. It is run with the support of the Booker Prize Foundation in London and is funded by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) in the UAE.