The literature festival will welcome an array of stars from the Arab world. Here are a few of the regional big names appearing at the InterContinental Dubai Festival City.
Shukri Al Mabkhout
Winner of the 2015 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his debut novel, The Italian, Tunisian author Shukri Al Mabkhout wrote his debut novel feverishly, in a desperate attempt to quell the anxiety and fear that he felt about what the future might hold for his country.
• Shukri Al Mabkhout will conduct his panel discussion, Silencing the Past, on the writing of history, and who gets to decide what is remembered and what is forgotten, on March 9 at 6:30pm
Fatima Sharafeddine
Her name is synonymous with children’s stories across the Arab world. The award-winning Lebanese author – who has written more than 110 books for children and young adults in Arabic, which have been translated into 14 languages – will speak about the pitfalls of translation and how to preserve the integrity of a work when presenting it to an international audience.
• Fatima Sharafeddine will conduct her panel discussion, Lost in Translation, on March 11 at 11:30am
Saud Alsanousi
This young novelist and journalist from Kuwait won the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his hard-hitting examination of identity and prejudice in his third novel, The Bamboo Stalk. In his most recent novel, Mama Hissa's Mice, Alsanousi wrote about "our relationship with ourselves", in a detailed and complex account of Kuwait's past, present and near future.
• Saud Alsanousi will conduct his Mama Hissa’s Mice In Conversation session on March 11 at 7pm
Maha Gargash
The Sand Fish – the internationally acclaimed first novel from Emirati author Maha Gargash, who writes in English – is the story of a rebellious girl's passage into womanhood in a city (1950s Dubai) that is shifting from a traditional way of life to a more modern society. Her second novel, That Other Me, which was published in January, delves into the effects of a changing world on an Emirati family living in Dubai and Cairo.
• Maha Gargash will conduct her That Other Me In Conversation session on March 12 at 3:30pm. Read an interview with the author in The Review on March 12
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