International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2009 - winner announcement, 16 march 2009

This year's winner ceremony takes at the Beach Rotana Hotel, Abu Dhabi, at around 9.30pm Gulf Standard Time (around 5.30pm GMT) - the event starts at 7pm GST.

Run in association with the Booker Prize Foundation and funded by the Emirates Foundation, the International Prize for Arabic Fiction is a prestigious literary prize which aims to recognise and reward excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing and to encourage wider readership of such Arabic literature internationally through translation.

As well as a cash prize, the winning author is guaranteed an English translation of his or her novel. This year's shortlist of six authors was announced in London in December 2008: Mohamed El-Bisatie, Fawaz Haddad, Inaam Kachachi, Ibrahim Nasrallah, Habib Selmi and Youssef Ziedan. The shortlisted authors will each receive $10,000, whilst the winner will receive an additional $50,000.

The prize is in its second year - its inaugural winner was Egyptian author Bahaa Taher with Sunset Oasis which, as a result of the prize, has since been translated in English by Humphrey Davies and will be published in the UK by Sceptre this September.