All prizes Tunisia
Prix littéraires Comar d'Or
Tunisia · Since 1997 · For books in Arabic or French
Awarded each spring in Tunis by the insurer Comar to the best Tunisian novel of the year, with separate prizes for novels in Arabic and in French. This site lists the winners of the main prize, the Comar d'Or, in both languages.
The insurer Comar set up the prizes with the support of the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, on the initiative of its then chairman, Rachid Ben Jemia, and first awarded them in 1997. Authors must be Tunisian, and the novel may be published in Tunisia or abroad. Two juries, one per language, made up of critics, academics and journalists, each give three prizes: the Comar d'Or, a special jury prize for originality and a discovery prize for a promising book. In 2026 the Comar d'Or was raised from 10,000 to 15,000 dinars. Entries have grown from 13 novels in the first session to a record 92 in 2026, 59 in Arabic and 33 in French. A 2016 press article credited the prize with lifting novel sales and encouraging publishers to take on more manuscripts. Winners include Yamen Manaï, Fawzia Zouari and Shukri Mabkhout, whose al-Talyani won in 2015.
Comar d'Or 2026 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Sangoma the Healer”
Novel · 556 pages
AI-generated summary:In 2002, Slim, a young Tunisian emergency doctor burned out by his work, flees after a scandal and drives across Africa by 4x4, from Cap Angela in Tunisia to Cape Agulhas in South Africa.
Comar d'Or 2026 · Winner
Sayf al-Sawwan
Novel · Historical, War, Politics · Desert Trilogy, book 3
AI-generated summary:In the 1940s, Boubaker al-Roubi, a cunning herder from the deserts of southern Tunisia, joins the auxiliaries of the French colonial army and rises through the ranks by ruthless loyalty.
Comar d'Or 2025 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Write, and You Will Be Loved by the Gods”
Novel · 179 pages
AI-generated summary:In a world that once killed children to appease the gods, a narrator who has no child to sacrifice offers his words instead, hoping the smoke of his burned sentences will rise to Zeus, Tanit and the idle angels.
Comar d'Or 2024 · Winner
Azza Filali · 72 when first published
Novel · 328 pages
AI-generated summary:In the summer heat, Emna, a lawyer from Tunis in her forties, takes on a mission to assess how independent the women of Tezdaïne are, a village on the island of Djerba known for its conservatism.
Comar d'Or 2024 · Winner
Dafatir al-Jilani wild Hamad
Title translated by AI:“The Notebooks of Jilani wild Hamad”
Novel · Migration, Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:A set of notebooks left behind by Jilani wild Hamad, a Tunisian who came to Paris in the early 1980s and ended up in a French prison, tells his own life and the long history of his clan in central Tunisia.
Comar d'Or 2023 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Siqal, the Ogress's Lair”
Novel · 184 pages · Speculative, Family
AI-generated summary:In Chebika, a village near Tozeur, four sisters are left in the care of a dog under a magic seal while their father goes on pilgrimage. An ogress comes for them, and the youngest, Leyla, disappears.
Comar d'Or 2023 · Winner
Jabal al-Julud
Novel · 390 pages · Historical, Politics, Satire
AI-generated summary:In Jebel Jelloud, a poor working-class district on the southern edge of Tunis, a crowd of neighbours wrestle with the times and with one another, from colonial rule to the troubled decade after the revolution.
Comar d'Or 2022 · Winner
Al-Kunbatta
Novel · Historical, War, Politics
AI-generated summary:In colonial Tunisia, an old storyteller brings back the forgotten life of Kunba, Ibrahim ben al-Hajj Mohamed, who gives up a life of drink and debauchery to take up arms against the French.
Comar d'Or 2022 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“In a Thirsty Land”
Emna Belhaj Yahia · 76 when first published
Novel · 222 pages · Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:In Tunis, a young woman questions her blind grandmother, Nojoum, about her life. From the start it is clear that the two are bound by a traumatic event they lived through together a few years earlier.
Comar d'Or 2022 · Winner
Al-Aswiya'
Title translated by AI:“The Normal Ones”
Novel · 162 pages
AI-generated summary:People used to die peacefully and kindly, until Shahin Allawi was born. Since then their gentleness has faded, and they avoid telling him that he is the only dead man among them.
Comar d'Or 2021 · Winner
Qiyamat al-hashshashin
Title translated by AI:“The Resurrection of the Assassins”
Novel · Historical, Crime
AI-generated summary:A Tunisian history professor finds the parchments of Hassan-i Sabbah, founder of the medieval Assassins, in an old grave. Hunted by those who want them burned, by new followers of the sect and by the police, he sets out to decode them.
Comar d'Or 2021 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Cat and the Scalpel”
Soufiane Ben Farhat · 61 when first published
Novel · 242 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In Tunisia in 2018, a solitary, tormented man in the grip of a midlife crisis watches his country's culture and intelligence give way to imposture and certainty in the years after the revolution.
Comar d'Or 2020 · Winner
لا نسبح في النهر مرتين · La Nasbahu fi al-Nahr Marratayn
Hassouna Mosbahi · 70 when first published
Novel · 232 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In Tunisia after the fall of Ben Ali, three men take turns telling their lives: an insurance clerk sliding into paranoia, a retired postal worker from Bizerte, and an intellectual back from thirty years in Paris.
Comar d'Or 2020 · Winner
Novel · 219 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:Around 2050, a bus carrying eighteen passengers down to a port in the Kerkennah archipelago and a pleasure boat cruising the Mediterranean are heading for a collision, as the islands become the centre of a drifting world.
Comar d'Or 2019 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Princess of Bizerte”
Novel · 319 pages · Historical, Love, War
AI-generated summary:In Bizerte in the early 1960s, Jamila, a brilliant girl from a modest family in the medina, attends the French lycée and falls in love with Philippe, eldest son of a French family, as the crisis over the city builds.
Comar d'Or 2019 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Jugurtha: A Counter-Portrait”
Rafik Darragi · 80 when first published
Novel · 247 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:The Numidian leader Jugurtha and his war against Rome are retold from his side, against the hostile Roman account that fixed his dark legend, in a novel that combines historical documentation with fiction.
Comar d'Or 2019 · Winner
Lalla al-Sayyida
Tarek Chibani · 45 when first published
Novel · 216 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:A woman named al-Sayyida tells the story of her body and her life from childhood to middle age, a life that runs alongside Tunisia's own, from Bourguiba's rule and independence in the 1950s to the present day.
Comar d'Or 2018 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Yesterday's Tomorrows”
Ali Bécheur · 78 when first published
Novel · 266 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:A son tells the story of his father, a bright-eyed boy from the medina of Tunis under the French protectorate who, helped by his schoolteacher, fulfils his dream of becoming a lawyer.
Comar d'Or 2018 · Winner
Ibnat al-Jahim
Title translated by AI:“Daughter of Hell”
Khairia Boubtan · 43 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Born in a downpour on the day her mother dies, a girl named Asma grows up hating the stepmother who takes her mother's place, and comes to believe that anyone she sees in her dreams is about to die.
Comar d'Or 2017 · Winner
Novel · 181 pages · Coming of age, Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:Decades after May 1968, an ageing teacher in Tunis looks back on the young foreign student he was in Paris, roaming the sites of the revolt in search of a woman and of some thread that would explain the upheaval.
Comar d'Or 2017 · Winner
Jihad Na'im
Title translated by AI:“Soft Jihad”
Mohamed Aissa Meddeb · 51 when first published
Novel · 259 pages · Politics, Migration
AI-generated summary:Nidal Fathallah, a young Tunisian militant, comes home after the revolution carrying his crimes with him, in a country where jobless young people drift into smuggling, clandestine crossings to Europe and jihad.
Comar d'Or 2017 · Winner
L'Amas ardent
Yamen Manai · 37 when first published
Novel · 204 pages · Satire, Politics, Nature
AI-generated summary:Near Nawa, a village in the Tunisian hinterland, a beekeeper known as the Don lives apart from the world with his bees, until he finds his colonies mutilated in a country still shaken by its recent revolution.
Comar d'Or 2016 · Winner
Tujan
Novel · 272 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:After twenty years in a cold foreign land, Sultan of the Awlad al-Ghazal clan returns to Tujan, a parched Berber village in southern Tunisia, haunted by the woman he loved and betrayed and by the clans' feud over water.
Comar d'Or 2016 · Winner
Fawzi Mellah · 70 when first published
Novel · 197 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:In the Tunisian interior, a young woman named Khadija stands up to her brother and his authority over her, then sets out to face the dangers of the sea, meeting people along the way who offer her compassion and help.
Comar d'Or 2016 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“My Mother's Body”
Fawzia Zouari · 61 when first published
Novel · 231 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Moved by the revolution in Tunisia to write about her mother at last, a woman recalls the spring of 2007, when she sat at the sick woman's bedside determined to solve the riddle of a mother who never confided in anyone.
Comar d'Or 2016 · Winner
Maraya al-Ghiyab
Title translated by AI:“Mirrors of Absence”
Nabiha Aissi · 44 when first published
Novel · 172 pages · Family, War
AI-generated summary:A Tunisian mother, Amna, learns from a letter sent by the school that her teenage daughter has stopped attending classes, and soon discovers that the girl has gone to join the war in Syria.
Comar d'Or 2015 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Three Graces”
Anouar Attia · 76 when first published
Novel · 256 pages
AI-generated summary:Three inseparable university students and their friend Yasmine learn that a teacher, Kateb, has given the four of them a collective nickname: the Three Graces.
Comar d'Or 2015 · Winner
الطلياني · al-Talyani
Shukri Mabkhout · 52 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:At his father's funeral, Abdel Nasser, nicknamed the Italian, attacks his neighbour, the imam, in front of stunned mourners. A friend reconstructs his life from childhood to find out why.
Also: IPAF 2015 winner
Comar d'Or 2014 · Winner
Diwan al-mawaji'
Title translated by AI:“The Book of Sorrows”
Mohamed El Bardi · 67 when first published
Novel · 531 pages · Politics, Historical
AI-generated summary:A political novel that reads a century of Tunisia's history through the surging feelings of the people who live it, mixing lament with longing.
Comar d'Or 2014 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“I Was Born Eight Times”
Saber Mansouri · 42 when first published
Novel · 327 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Massyre, the only boy after seven sisters, grows up near the Montagne Blanche in Tunisia, earning his way through eight small trades while he studies to become a history teacher.
Comar d'Or 2013 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Plume of the Breakers”
Novel · 192 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:A man set on silence and solitude lives surrounded by an overflowing natural world and its animals, and through his contact with it moves slowly toward a violent, painful release of poetic speech.
Comar d'Or 2012 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Homeland”
Azza Filali · 60 when first published
Novel · 390 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In a house on a forgotten clifftop facing the sea, a woman and two men whom nothing destined to meet are brought together, while a strange silence hangs over Tunisia.
Comar d'Or 2012 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Ribbon Games”
Emna Belhaj Yahia · 66 when first published
Novel · 210 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Frida, a Tunisian academic in her fifties, shares her life with a new partner, her son and her ageing mother, until her beloved son falls in love with a young student who wears a headscarf.
Comar d'Or 2012 · Winner
'Ashiqat Adam
Title translated by AI:“Adam's Mistress”
Moncef Ouhaibi · 63 when first published
Novel · 343 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Si al-Habib and Ilham meet on Facebook and fall for each other while hiding behind pseudonyms; told entirely through their chats and messages, each tries to find out who the other really is.
Comar d'Or 2011 · Winner
Rawa'ih al-madina
Title translated by AI:“Scents of the City”
Hussein al-Wad · 62 when first published
Novel · 361 pages
AI-generated summary:A narrator wanders through a Tunisian city by its smells, from jasmine and spices to rubbish heaps, and follows how they change over the decades along with the city itself.
Comar d'Or 2010 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Transfer of the Ashes”
Fawzi Mellah · 63 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In December 1933 London celebrates the arrival of the Codex Sinaiticus, a Bible kept for centuries at St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai. The story goes back to ask who took it from the monks, and what secrets it holds.
Comar d'Or 2010 · Winner
Tafasil saghira
Title translated by AI:“Small Details”
Noureddine Aloui · 46 when first published
Novel · 299 pages
AI-generated summary:In Tunis, a man who wants to take on what is wrong with his country looks past the city's tourist face to its small, harsh details, and wears himself out against a corrupt and hypocritical society.
Comar d'Or 2009 · Winner
Hayy Bab Suwayqa
Title translated by AI:“The Bab Souika Quarter”
Abdelkader Belhadj Nasr · 62 when first published
Novel · 505 pages · Politics, Crime
AI-generated summary:In the Bab Souika quarter of Tunis, late in Bourguiba's rule, an honest journalist is pushed aside as a crooked colleague climbs, while wealthy schemers plot to change the face of the neighbourhood with a tunnel.
Comar d'Or 2009 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The March of Uncertainty”
Yamen Manai · 28 when first published
Novel · 141 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Between Tunisia and France, chance separates two people over a magic egg and, eleven years later, chooses the rigorous world of mathematics to bring them together again.
Comar d'Or 2008 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“An Afternoon in the Desert”
Mustapha Tlili · 71 when first published
Novel · 269 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the early 1990s a long-delayed letter reaches the crumbling post office of a village on the edge of the North African desert, at the foot of the Lion Mountain, once a gentle place and now a hell.
Comar d'Or 2008 · Winner
Lawn al-ruh
Title translated by AI:“The Colour of the Soul”
Salah Eddine Boujah · 52 when first published
Novel · 190 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In a vast hotel in a tourist resort, informants and surveillance cameras watch every guest, following their bodies and prying into their secrets, in a world gripped by the fear of bombings.
Comar d'Or 2007 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Second Wife”
Fawzia Zouari · 51 when first published
Novel · 321 pages · Family, Migration, Crime
AI-generated summary:When Sadek, an Algerian lawyer, is found murdered outside Paris, the police uncover his two marriages and his young mistress, and four women caught up in his betrayal begin, one after another, to speak.
Comar d'Or 2007 · Winner
Al-Mishrat
Title translated by AI:“The Scalpel”
Kamel Riahi · 32 when first published
Novel · 177 pages · Satire, Crime
AI-generated summary:An unknown man on a motorbike roams Tunis slashing women's backsides with a scalpel, spreading terror through the city, while a crowd of strange figures, historical, invented and monstrous, goes looking for the secret behind the crimes.
Comar d'Or 2006 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Women's Paradise”
Ali Bécheur · 67 when first published
Novel · 298 pages · Coming of age, Love
AI-generated summary:One summer a writer meets Luz, an actress passing through his country. Their new love moves him to write the book of his life, and he leads her through the places of his childhood in a cosmopolitan seaside town.
Comar d'Or 2006 · Winner
Huriyya
Hafedh Mahfoudh · 40 when first published
Novel · Love
AI-generated summary:Said ben Issa receives a letter from Ilyas Tanban, the university teacher his students once idolised. He finds him bedridden in his old palace, with a strange request: that Said complete his love for the beautiful young Sana Tamarzist.
Comar d'Or 2005 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The House on the Hill”
Novel · 238 pages · Autofiction, Historical
AI-generated summary:A man born into a Tunisian family early in the 20th century, taken from his relatives as a small child by the colonial authorities and raised as a European, tells in a diary of a life torn between two worlds.
Comar d'Or 2005 · Winner
al-Karnafal
Title translated by AI:“The Carnival”
Mohamed El Bardi · 57 when first published
Novel · 197 pages · Autofiction, Politics
AI-generated summary:Racing against time in the southern Tunisian town of Gabès, a narrator draws its people into telling their own and their neighbours' stories, from April 1938 to the fall of Baghdad.
Comar d'Or 2004 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Emir and the Crusaders”
Alia Mabrouk · 58 when first published
Novel · 267 pages · Historical, War, Love
AI-generated summary:In 13th-century Ifriqiya, the reign of the Hafsid sultan Abu Abdallah, who takes the title al-Mustansir, unfolds through glorious and dark days, from his passion for the poet Sara of Aleppo to his stand against the crusaders of Saint Louis.
Comar d'Or 2004 · Winner
al-Qaranful la Ya'ish fi al-Sahra'
Title translated by AI:“Carnations Do Not Live in the Desert”
Hédi Thabet · 61 when first published
Novel · 191 pages
Comar d'Or 2003 · Winner
Wara' al-Sarab... Qalilan
Title translated by AI:“A Little Beyond the Mirage”
Brahim Dargouthi · 47 when first published
Novel · 210 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the desert and mining country of southern Tunisia under French rule, a narrator gathers the stories of his grandmother and of the people around Aziz al-Sultani as phosphate is found, a railway is built and slaves become miners.
Comar d'Or 2003 · Winner
Wada'an... Hammurabi
Title translated by AI:“Farewell... Hammurabi”
Messaouda Boubaker · 48 when first published
Novel · 163 pages
Comar d'Or 2003 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Lights of Nejma”
Moncef Ben M'rad · 60 when first published
Novel · Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:Soliman, a boy from a poor family in southern Tunisia, kills the Koranic teacher who abused him and lives on the run, selling batteries from souk to souk, until he meets Princesse, cast out by her fiancé.
Comar d'Or 2002 · Winner
Anouar Attia · 63 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:From a psychiatric hospital, a man writes a long letter to "a dear namesake and friend", going back over a life in Tunisian society shaped by the women in it, above all Hayet, whom he has loved since he was twenty.
Comar d'Or 2002 · Winner
Fi Intizar al-Hayat
Title translated by AI:“Waiting for Life”
Kamel Zaghbani · 36 when first published
Novel · 261 pages · Politics, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:From the 1970s, when reckless economic policies and harsh weather drive the poor from the Tunisian countryside, a man is shaped by the people and events of four decades into a disillusioned member of his generation.
Comar d'Or 2001 · Winner
Waqa'i' al-Madina al-Ghariba
Title translated by AI:“Chronicles of the Strange City”
Abdeljabbar El Euch · 40 when first published
Novel · 214 pages · Satire, Speculative, Politics
AI-generated summary:After twenty-two artists and thinkers die in a mass suicide, a musician in a city café finds he can no longer rise from his chair, and the strange affliction begins to spread through the city.
Comar d'Or 2001 · Winner
Emna Belhaj Yahia · 55 when first published
Novel · 140 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In an unnamed capital, a woman in the grip of a nervous breakdown turns her anger on her mother, Tasharej, a thoroughly modern woman, while other chapters follow poorer people who live on dreams and memories.
Comar d'Or 2000 · Winner
Qindil Bab al-Madina
Title translated by AI:“The Lamp of the City Gate”
Abdelkader Belhadj Nasr · 53 when first published
Novel · 260 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In the old medina of Tunis, the tenants of a building on Nahj al-Murr, among them Souad, Safia, Othman and the troubled Ammar, live out the years after independence, between old customs and the wish to be free.
Comar d'Or 2000 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Voices in the Crossing”
Majid El Houssi · 58 when first published
Novel · 172 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:A man recalls the women of his life: his Italian friend Anna, who opens the worlds of love, learning and art to him, his long-suffering mother, and the Bedouin girls of the village of Tâ.