Your weekly guide to the biggest happenings in the world of books
- Pitched as ‘Gossip Girl meets Get Out’, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé has landed a million dollar book deal for her Young Adult thriller Ace of Spades. Read about it here.
- Emirati publisher Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi to restore libraries in Beirut damaged by last month’s devastating explosion. More here.
- Speaking of libraries, the Emirates Literature Foundation’s 2021 School Librarian of the Year award is now open for nominations. Find out more here
- Fans of Frank Herbert’s science fiction Dune series and of Timothée Chalamet’s bone structure can meet in the middle with the first trailer for the 2020 Dune film adaptation. You can watch the trailer here.
- Science fiction sand worms not your thing? Have no fear, the trailer for the film adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic Rebecca starring Armie Hammer, Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas was also released this week. Take a look here.
- Is there anything more shaming than shelves full of books you will never read? Asks Adrian Chiles in an opinion piece in The Guardian.
- A team of volunteers from across the region are tracking down and preserving the covers of Arabic language books from history by scanning them in and posting them to Instagram. It’s an ongoing project led by the Egyptian designer Mahmoud El Hosseiny but you can look at the range of covers so far on their Instagram profile @arabicbookcoverarchive
- 16 year-old student Dara McAnulty from Northern Ireland triumphed over established writers and won the Wainwright prize for nature writing this week. More here.
- In more prize-winning news, Maggie O’ Farrell has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction this week with her latest novel Hamnet. Details here.
