Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf wins the FIL Award for Literature in Romance Languages

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Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf won the Award for Literature in Romance Languages granted by the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) on Monday. The prize, one of the most prestigious in the international literary world, comes with a $150,000 award and is given to outstanding authors who publish in Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian, or Portuguese. The jury highlighted Maalouf as one of the most important voices of our time, whose work explores the fractures and blends of the modern world, while rejecting nationalistic and religious narrow-mindedness.

The announcement of the FIL Literature Award was made Monday morning in Guadalajara, the site of the most important book fair in Latin America and the second-largest in the world, during a ceremony attended by local authorities, the FIL leadership, academics, and journalists. Héctor Raúl Solís, president of the prize, stated that this year they received 48 nominations from 18 countries, submitted by cultural institutions, publishers, academic organizations, and a jury made up of scholars and literary critics.

The FIL organization will present the award in November, during the opening of the fair held annually in the capital of the State of Jalisco, in western Mexico. This fair is one of the major gatherings of narrative literature in Latin America and is also considered the most important publishing event in Ibero-America. Mozambican writer Mia Couto, who writes in Portuguese, received the award last year by unanimous decision — the first African author to receive it. Couto used the moment to advocate for literature as a form of resistance against what he has denounced in his work as “the act of erasing history”, or “historicide,” as he termed it.

Amin Maalouf’s work discusses the international order. “We are surrounded by threats,” he repeatedly warns in various interviews.

The Franco-Lebanese author, permanent secretary of the French Academy since September 2023 and winner of the Goncourt Prize in 1993, explores through his writing the complexity of international challenges and threats, where there is less and less accountability and fewer responsible actors. “No country has the moral credibility to act as a world power,” Maalouf asserts.

FIL was founded by the University of Guadalajara and features an ambitious program that includes participation from renowned global authors. Barcelona will be the guest of honor at the 2025 edition, and organizers have announced that 69 writers will travel to the fair. The goal, said the commissioner of the Catalan mission, journalist Anna Guitart, is “to present the current literary scene of Barcelona, as if we were to gather everyone writing in or about Barcelona, in any language, in front of the cathedral for a photo.”