The Arab Writers Union (ar.: اتحاد الكتاب العرب) is an association of Arab writers, founded in 1969, in Damascus, Syria, at the initiative of a group of Arab writers including Syrian novelist

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. In 2008, the union was moved from Damascus to

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

and in 2015 to

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. Its current president is Muhammad Al-Hourani. In 2010, the Union published a list of the "100 Best Arabic novels," although the list in fact contained 105 entries. It ranked Egyptian author

Naguib Mahfouz Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha (, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described him as a writer "who, through wo ...

's ''Cairo Trilogy'' as the best Arabic-language novel, followed by ''In Search of Walid Masoud'' by

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (28 August 1919 – 12 December 1994) () was an Iraqi-Palestinian author, artist and intellectual born in Adana in French-occupied Cilicia to a Syriac Orthodox Christian family. His family survived the Seyfo Genocide and f ...

and ''Honor'' by

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Controversies

On 27 January 1995, following Syrian pressure, it was announced in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

that the Arab Writers Union had expelled the Syrian poet

Adunis Ali Ahmad Said Esber (, Levantine Arabic, North Levantine ; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis ( ), is a Syrian people, Syrian poet, essayist and translator. Maya Jaggi, writing for The Guardian stated "He led a mod ...

, for his participation in a meeting in

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in 1993 that was attended by Israeli foreign minister

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. This prompted widespread criticism among Arab intellectuals, with Hazem Sagieh, an editor at London-based Arabic daily ''Al Hayat'', describing the Arab Writers Union as "remnants of a Stalinist past." In 2007, Iraqi-German writer

Najem Wali Najem Wali (; born 1956) is an Iraqi novelist and journalist, based in Germany. Life Born in Amarah, Wali fled Iraq in 1980 after the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War. He lives in Hamburg. Wali has published seven books. He is a correspondent for ...

criticized the Union for its lack of solidarity with imprisoned or persecuted Arab writers and for what he described as its long-standing cooperation with the former government of Iraqi leader

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. In 2012, one year after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, Syrian writers, some of them living in Syria and others in exile, founded the Syrian Writers Association (SWA). Based in London, the SWA described itself as a "democratic alternative" to the Arab Writers Union.

References

{{Authority control Writers' organizations Arabic literature