I’d like to choose The Sirocco Winds by Ruba Abughaida as the winner. I was delighted by the lyrical quality of this piece, and the way that the writer moved gracefully from the intimate domestic scenes of the narrator’s birth and naming to the panoramic evocation of the political context of her life. It’s vivid, exciting writing, well balanced but at the same time full of energy. And it promises an insight into a country and people who are often in the news but in spite of that little understood, a perspective behind the headlines.