Zahran Al Qasimi (born in 1974) is an Omani poet and novelist. Among his most prominent publications are the novel (The Sniper), which won the Cultural Creativity Award from the Omani Association for Writers in 2015, and the novel (Exile of the Water Diviner), which won the International Arabic Booker Prize in 2023, as the first Omani novelist to receive this award. The most prominent thing that attracted the jury was the writer’s interest in the subject of water and its relationship to the environment and nature in difficult areas, Zahran Al Qasimi presented this theme through a continuous synthesis between reality and myth, a tight narrative structure, a transparent poetic language, and exciting characters.
When his soul left his body and this world, he left a house for poetry, a place for his things, and walls where the poetry he loved would remain. The Bahraini poet Ibrahim Al Arrayed, and all those who (followed) him in his literary journey and translated works, were retained by the Sheikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Centre for Culture and Research in his city which he belonged, Manama. For it was the house of fame, as the first among the homes of cultural centers outside the city of Muharraq.
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