Swimming Against the Tide by Said Khatibi (Hachette Antoine) has won the 2026 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, at the Department of Culture and Tourism--Abu Dhabi.
Living in Slovenia, Said Khatibi is an Algerian novelist and journalist, educated at the University of Algiers and the Sorbonne. He is the author of Forty Years Waiting for Isabel (2016), winner of the 2017 Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel; Firewood of Sarajevo (2018), shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2020; and The End of the Desert (2022), winner of the 2023 Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
This marks the second time the author has been recognized by the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Organizers said the novel "follows two parallel stories in Algiers: a female ophthalmologist who restores her patients' sight with corneas stolen from dead bodies is arrested for the murder of her husband, while her father, a former freedom fighter, is accused of collaboration with the former French occupier. As the narratives converge, it traces Algeria's history from the Second World War to the Black Decade of the 1990s (the Algerian Civil War), including the War of Liberation and its aftermath."
Chair of judges Mohamed Elkadhi said: "Swimming Against the Tide is a captivating novel that lives up to its title, subtly probing the origins of the Black Decade in Algeria by swimming against the current of history. Said Khatibi presents us with fragments of a complex, hazy picture that the reader must reconstruct and rearrange in order to arrive at a meaning that encapsulates this elusive historical moment.
"In sensitive prose that strikes a balance between the everyday and the literary, the personal and the collective intertwine in a novel peopled by complex characters, both cruel and fragile. It is a novel to be devoured with relish, yet in its piercing scrutiny of unspoken and thwarted human pains and desires, it also leaves a bitter taste."
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Six novels have been shortlisted for the €100,000 (about $116,620) Dublin Literary Award, sponsored by Dublin City Council and recognizing a single work of international fiction, whether originally written in English or translated into it. If the winning title is a translation, the author receives €75,000 (about $87,465), while the translator is awarded €25,000 (about $29,155).
The finalists include four novels in translation--three from French and one from Croatian--with authors who are American, Bosnian, British, and Canadian. Two are debut novelists, Magdalena Blažević and Éric Chacour. The winner will be announced at International Literature Festival Dublin on May 21. This year's shortlisted titles are:
Gliff by Ali Smith
In Late Summer by Magdalena Blažević, translated from the Croatian by Anđelka Raguž
Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud, translated from the French by Cory Stockwell
Perspectives by Laurent Binet, translated from the French by Sam Taylor
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated from the French by Pablo Strauss