On Friday, January 30, at 6:00 PM, a launch ceremony will be held for the new novel titled ‘Mr. Walaashi – The Last Nobel Prize Banquet’. The event will take place in Hall ‘Plaza 1’ at the Cairo International Book Fair, which is currently ongoing.
The discussion will explore the novel’s dimensions and its intellectual and aesthetic contexts, before concluding with a book signing session in the hall.
The new novel is part of a narrative project that engages with questions of literary fame, symbolic power, and the writer’s relationship with global cultural institutions. The novel adopts a simultaneously reflective and satirical tone, deconstructing the idea of major literary prizes, foremost among them the Nobel Prize in Literature, through an imagined banquet that transforms into a space for confessions, moral accountability, and revealing the human contradictions behind the spotlight.
The work blends novelistic narrative with intellectual fiction, relying on a well-known style of interrogating cultural history and posing existential questions related to writing, betrayal, and meaning.
He is considered one of the most prominent contemporary Arab novelists, born in Algeria in 1954. He has published dozens of novels and critical studies, with his works translated into several languages and having received prestigious Arab and international awards. His writings are characterized by a blend of historical narrative and human depth, with a special focus on issues of memory, identity, and exile, and his name is consistently present in major cultural discussions in the Arab world.
