Jürgen Habermas Named Sheikh Zayed Award Cultural Personality
The 15th iteration of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award gives its career achievement honor, Cultural Personality of the Year, to the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
Jürgen Habermas at the Munich School of Philosophy, 2008. Image: Wolfram Huke, CC by SA 3.0
‘A Pioneer of Critical Theory’
Capping its announcements of 2021 winners, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in Abu Dhabi has named German philosopher Jürgen Habermas its Cultural Personality of the Year.
Along with the program’s other winners—reported on April 22—this award is to be conferred during the annual awards ceremony in May during the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, and will come with a medal, a certificate, and a cash award of 1 million UAE dirhams (US$272,257). That purse, along with 750,000 UAE dirhams (US$204,181) for winners of each of the eight book categories in the program, makes the Sheikh Zayed Book Award one of the wealthiest portfolios of publishing-related honors in the world, worth a total of 7 million dirhams (US$1.9 million).