Professor Chokri Mabkhout
King Faisal Prize in Arabic Language and Literature 2018 Laureate
Topic: "Studies Dealing with Autobiography in Arabic Literature"
My endeavor is that our Arab-Islamic culture should retrieve its global standing by having its essence driven by both its original foundations and modernization
Chokri Mabkhout earned the Certificate for the Completion of Studies from the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Teachers’ Institute in Soussa in 1986. A year later, he obtained the Certificate of Research Aptitude from the Arts College in Manouba. He earned the Certificate of Aggregation in Arabic Language and Literature from the same college in 1988. In 2001, he received his Ph.D. in Arabic Language and Literature from the College of Arts, Manouba University.
Professor Mabkhout has been teaching language, literature, linguistics, and discourse analysis, at Manouba University since 1988. He assumed the deanship of the Faculty of Arts, and Humanities at Manouba University, and then assumed the chancellorship of this university where he is currently a professor.
He founded, supervised, and edited the magazine Academia, which was published by Manouba University. He also edited and supervised the quarterly cultural magazine The New Thought (Al-Fikr Al-Jadid). He is the Director of the refereed Jjournal Annals of the Tunisian University that is issued by Manouba University. Besides, he is a member of a number of scholarly committees and rights organizations.
Professor Mabkhout has published a number of scholarly works, including Sirat Al-Ghaeb, Sirat Al-A’ati: Al-Sirah Al-Thatiyah Fi Kitab Al-Ayyam of Tâhâ Hussayn, Aesthetics: The Text and its Readers in Classical Arabic Poetics, The construction of Negation, Rhetorical Induction, The Circle of Linguistic Works, The Progeny of the Thief of Fire: The Intellectual Biography, and The Leader and his Shadows: Biography in Tunisia. He then published a collection of stories, Madame President and a second novel titled Baganda.
He received a number of awards, including the Tunisian Ministry of Culture’s award in 1994 for his book The Aesthetics of Intimacy, King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Award for Translation (Honorary Award) in 2012 for his book The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Pragmatics, and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2015 for his novel Etalyenni (The Italian).
This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.
- He authored many books including:
- Mira’at Al-Khasir (Dar Al-Tanweer), (2019).
- Madinat Al-Najiheen (Al-An Publications), (2019).
Al-Sirah Al-Atirah Li Al-Zaeem (Dar Al-Tanweer), (2020).