Hammour Ziada

Hammour Ziada is a Sudanese writer and journalist, born in Khartoum in 1977. He has worked for both charitable and civil society organisations, and as a journalist for a number of Sudanese newspapers, including Al-Mustaqilla, Ajras al-Horriya and Al-Jarida. He was also editor-in-chief of the cultural section of the Sudanese paper Al-Akhbar. Ziada is the author of several works of fiction: A Life Story from Omdurman (2008); Al-Kunj (2010); and Sleeping at the Foot of the Mountain (2014). His second novel, The Longing of the Dervish (2014), won Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2014 and was shortlisted for the 2015 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His third novel, The Drowning (2018), was translated into English and French, with its French edition shortlisted for the Prix de la Littérature Arabe, awarded by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. His short story ‘Sleeping at the Foot of the Mountain’ was adapted into a Sudanese and international film, entitled ‘You Will Die at Twenty’, which has won prizes at festivals in Venice, Carthage and El-Gouna, Egypt, among others.