Created in 2013, the Lagardere-IMA Award for Arabic literature is one of the rare French prizes dedicated to Arabic literary creation. The award of 10,000 EUR promotes the work of a writer, citizen of one of the countries of the Arab league, translated into, or originally written in, French, between September 2022 and September 2023.
Samar Yazbek’s “La demeure du vent” (The wind’s abode,translated by Khaled Osman et Ola Mehanna) published by Stock, as well as Mansoura Ezeldin’s “Les jardins de Basra” (The orchards of Basra, translted into French by Philippe Vigreux) …

By Quentin Perissinotto for Le Regard Libre, 11 April 2023
The Orchards of Basra is an illusory attempt to resuscitate images and bring them to life. Hishâm, an antique book dealer in Cairo, is inhabited and haunted by a dream: he sees angels picking all the jasmine in Basra. Determined to decipher the meaning of this dream, he flips through the pages of an 8th century manuscript , The Great Book of the Interpretation of Dreams , which lists this vision. He discovers there that the author predicts this vision as the slow and disastrous disappearance of all the intellectuals of …

Khaled Khalifa, in an interview with Marianne Meunier for La Croix, March 10, 2023
Originally from Aleppo, Khaled Khalifa lives in Damascus, which he never wanted to leave despite the conflict. He reads there alone, saddened to no longer be able to discuss his reading with his relatives, most of whom have left.

By Guirado for Mare Nostrum, January 3, 2023
It all starts with a dream. A haunting and poetic dream in which angels descend from heaven to pick jasmine from the gardens of Basra – present-day Basra in Iraq. This dream continually monopolizes the mind of Hishâm Khattab who, after brilliant studies in geology which did not lead to any professional opportunities, now earns his living by reselling old books.

By Richard Jacquemond, for Le Monde des Livres, February 9th, 2023
Hisham, who lives off the antique book trade, is haunted by a dream. He sees himself alive, under the name of Yazid Ibn Abihi, in Basra (or Basra, name of the second city of Iraq, located in the south of the country), at the end of the first century of the Hegira, when this city was a major intellectual and religious center of the nascent Islamic empire.

A review by Nadia Leila Aissaoui, for L’Orient-Le-Jour, February 2nd, 2023
 
The Orchards of Basra by Mansoura Ez-Eldin, translated from Arabic (Egypt) by Philippe Vigreux, Sindbad/Actes-sud, 2023, 224 p.
In this captivating and remarkably translated novel, Mansoura Ez-Eldin takes us on a round trip in time and space, between Cairo and Basra, to meet timeless characters in a story that subtly mixes fiction and historical fact.