Mohamed Samir Nada

Mohamed Samir Nada
Mohamed Samir Nada in 2023
Born	1978 (age 46–47) Baghdad, Iraq
Occupations	Novelist Journalist

Mohamed Samir Nada (Arabic: محمد سمير ندا, born in Baghdad 1978), is an Egyptian novelist and journalist. His novel The Prayer of Anxiety (صلاة القلق, Salat Al-Qalaq) won the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2025.

Life and career

He was born in 1978 in Baghdad, where he spent his early childhood. He grew up in a literary family — both parents were writers and intellectuals — before the family settled in Egypt from 1984 to 1990, and later in Tripoli, Libya, until 1996. He graduated from the Faculty of Commerce in Cairo.

He lived in several countries at different stages of his life, an experience that shapes his creative work and appears in the diverse settings and cultural openness of his novels.

He is the financial director of a tourism company in Cairo.^[1]

Style

Nada blends historical events with imagination and fantasy, addressing national traumas such as the Naksa and the Nakba. He incorporates musical references—including songs by Hafez — as markers of historical eras. His writing features multiple narrative voices and unconventional techniques influenced by varied cultural experiences.

Mohamed Samir Nada believes that the role of the writer is to shed light on facts and raise questions in the reader's mind, not to impose opinions, emphasizing the importance of restoring historical facts and correcting distortions in collective consciousness. He describes his literary mission as “throwing stones into stagnant lakes” to stir critical awareness in the public.^[2]

Selected publications

References