2012 is the 6th edition of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
The call for applications is now open, and the deadline is September 1st 2011.

The book describes the bloody crackdown in 1980 by the regime of Hafez Al Assad, father of the current Syrian president and “founder” of the clan in power that has dominated the last half-century Damascus, and stood against an attempted revolt led by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is this story that Khalifa tells through the voices the characters of his novel, members of Syrian ordinary families, with their stories of love, hope and betrayal, who found themselves caught between fundamentalism and a police corrupt regime. In the background, unfolds the moral and material destruction of an entire country. “The city (of Aleppo), one time proud to be called the Vienna of the East, had become a fortress in ruins, inhabited by ghosts who were afraid”.

An interview by Riccardo Stagliano for Venerdi, Supplement to La Repubblica, May 13th, 2011: “The Syrian culture, in its daily practices, does not allow intransigence. The history of Syria bears witness to a big openness to the Other. If the Syrians had accepted extremism, the Muslim Brotherhood would have had an easy game to win in the eighties. I believe that the Syrian society will make the roots of its civilization prevail again and for the first time in five centuries, the Syrians will be able to start building a democracy that represents them, based on tolerance and on the use of free elections.”

The relation between popular movements in the Arab world is clear: our regimes have in common despotism and corruption, although some claim to be concerned primarily with the defense of national interests and others, by economic growth. Popular demands are also the same: freedom, from which our peoples have long been deprived, and dignity after so many humiliations and so many violations of basic human rights. The powers in place borrow each other’s rhetoric and display a shocking ignorance of what is happening deep within their countries. The Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs giggled when a reporter asked him a question about the possibility of a revolution in Egypt as in Tunisia. And the Syrian president responded in the same manner to a question about the impact of the Egyptian revolution in Syria…