Morocco Book Prize honors winners of its 56th edition in Rabat
The Morocco Book Prize celebrated the winners of its 56th edition during an official ceremony held in Rabat, recognizing outstanding literary and academic works published in 2025. Organized by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, the event brought together Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid alongside leading figures from Morocco’s cultural and intellectual communities.
The ceremony featured musical performances and public readings from the winning books, highlighting the diversity of this year’s award-winning publications. Speaking during the event, jury president Abdallah Saaf said the Morocco Book Prize has become a well-established national cultural institution, noting that its transparent procedures and evaluation methods have strengthened both its credibility and symbolic importance.
Saaf also praised the work of the specialized jury committees, which independently assessed and classified a total of 162 submissions across multiple disciplines before selecting the winners.
The poetry prize was awarded jointly to Mokhlis Saghir for Al-Ard Al-Mawboo’ah (The Pestilent Earth), published by the Arab Institution for Studies and Publishing in Beirut, and Mounir Serhani for Nasita hidha’aka ya abi (Father, You Forgot Your Shoes), published by Khotoot Wa Dilal in Amman.
The fiction and narrative prize was also shared by two authors. Anis Al-Rafei received the distinction for his novel Jamee’uhum yatakallamoona min famee (They All Speak Through My Mouth), while Jamal Bendahmane was honored for Mihnat Ibn Al-Lisan (The Trial of Ibn Al-Lisan), published by Afrique Orient Editions in Casablanca.
In the humanities category, the jury selected Abdelkader Mellouk for his study on the philosophy of Moses Maimonides and the influence of Islamic thought, and Brahim Mjidila for his work examining the humanist dimension of Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi’s personalist philosophy. Both books were published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Beirut.
Abdelali Demiani received the prize for literary, artistic and linguistic studies for his two-volume work on representations of otherness in French travel writing about Morocco. The translation prize went to Jamal Abernous for his Arabic translation of Henri Basset’s Essay on Berber Literature, published by the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture.
The award for Amazigh studies was presented to Fatima Chibli for her linguistic research on the Amazigh dialect of Ayt Sgougou in the Middle Atlas. Salah Ait Salah won the Amazigh literature prize for his novel Seven Colors of Resentment, published by the Tirra Association.
The children’s and young adult literature prize was jointly awarded to Abdelatif Ait Nila for The Gloomy Golden Needle and Other Stories and Ahmed Sbiaa for An Empty Photo Album. The jury decided not to award the social sciences prize this year.
The sectoral committees were chaired by Hassan Mekhafi, Chouaib Halifi, Ahmed Chaouki Binebine, Idriss El Karoui, Noureddine Zouitni, Hassan Bahraoui, Karim Bensoukas and Abdessamia Bensaber, each overseeing the evaluation process within their respective disciplines.
