Saleem Haddad’s novel Guapa has been awarded the Polari First Book Prize 2017.

Since 2010, the annual prize is awarded  to a writer whose first book explores the LGBT experience, whether in poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction.

Haddad was named the winner of the 2017 award at a ceremony held in London’s Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival.

Set over the course of 24 hours, Guapa follows Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, trying to carve out a life for himself in the midst of political and religious upheaval.

Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City in 1983 to a Lebanese-Palestinian father and an Iraqi-German mother, and educated in Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

He has worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and currently lives in London, where he advises on inclusion of refugees, women, and young people in the transition and peace processes of the Arab Spring.

Haddad wrote his debut novel over a three year period, spending three hours each morning writing before he went to work.

Six books were shortlisted for the prize, the other nominated works were Expecting by Chitra Ramaswamy,  We Go Around In The Night And Are Consumed By Fire by Jules Grant, Straight Jacket by Matthew Todd, The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise by Crystal Jeans and Jerusalem Ablaze by Orlando Ortega-Medina.

OIP Staff