A Perth writer who grew up in Denmark and Egypt has won a major literary award for his “gripping novel” set in the Middle East.

Mohammed Massoud Morsi recently received the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award for his unpublished fiction manuscript The Hair of the Pigeon.

The $10,000 prize judges said his “gripping novel speaks powerfully to the moment we are in”.

“In the tangled streets of millennial Damascus, Ghassan and Sama are childhood friends,” they said.

“As they grow into adulthood in the convulsions of the Arab Spring, violence erupts intimately into their lives.

“The fatality of these days, between regimes and in the shadow of violent expulsions, plays out with the precision of a primal scene.”

Morsi, who was born in Copenhagen in 1975 before moving to Egypt with his Egyptian parents

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