Muhsin al-Musawi (Chair of the Judging Panel)

Professor Muhsin al-Musawi is a literary critic and Professor of Classical and Modern Arabic Literature, Comparative and Cultural Studies at Columbia University. He served as academic consultant for many academic institutions and taught for over two decades at universities in the Arab world before moving to Columbia University. He is the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature and the recipient of several prestigious prizes: the Owais Award in Literary Criticism in 2002, the Kuwait Prize in Arabic language and literature in 2018, the King Faisal Prize in Arabic Language and Literature in 2022, and also in 2022, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the category of Arabic Culture in Other Languages for his book The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures (2021). He is the author of twenty-eight books (including six novels) and over sixty scholarly articles. His teaching and research interests span several periods and genres. His books include: Scheherazade in England (1981), The Society of the Thousand and One Nights (2000), The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights (2009), Anglo-Orient (2000), The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (2003), Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (2006), Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict (2006), and Islam on the Street: Religion in Arabic Literature (2009), which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010. He is also editor of and contributor to Arabic Literary Thresholds: Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship (2009) and wrote the introduction and notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics Edition of The Arabian Nights (2007). His book, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (2015) has been widely acclaimed.