ALBAWABA - Kuwaiti author Taleb Al Rifai, received, Monday the French Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters award for his contributions in building cultural bridges between Kuwait, the Arab world and France. He received his award from the French Ambassador to Kuwait Claire Le Flecher.
(Kuwaiti author receives French award from Claire Le Flecher. Courtesy Kuwait Times)
The Kuwait Times did a full-length feature on the renowned Kuwait novelist as all of his books are translated into French.
"Being on the bestseller authors' list doesn't mean you're a world-class writer..."⠀
— Sharjah Book Authority (@SharjahBookAuth) November 4, 2021
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Cultural personality of the year, Kuwaiti novelist Taleb Al-Refai initiates a meaningful dialogue at Sharjah International Book Fair.⠀#Theresalwaysarightbook⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀#SIBF21 pic.twitter.com/EJp1lXEWDX
He can be proud of the fact that he is the only Kuwait author to have his novels translated into that language because of the special character it contains.
"Being the Cultural Personality of the Year, particularly in Sharjah, and this is the harvest of a long life that has passed me by.”⠀
— Sharjah Book Authority (@SharjahBookAuth) November 2, 2021
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Kuwaiti novelist Taleb Al-Refai delivers his speech as the Cultural Personality of the Year during the opening ceremony of #SIBF21.⠀
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Al-Refai is an engineer by profession and spent 15 years in that practice before he took pen-to-paper and started writing novels. In 2021 he become the "Cultural Personality of the Year" at the Sharjah International Book Fair.
Refai’s journey in writing, began in the mid-1970s, dedicated to highlighting social activism among the Kuwaiti community and the struggles of Arab and foreign workers in the country, and discussing women’s issues and gender relations. He is one of the few Arab authors who write according to the school of auto-fiction, in which writers use their own names and memoirs in their works and was one of the main reasons behind translating many of his works in French, English, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Turkish and Urdu writes Ghadeer Ghloum in Kuwait Times.
