Google Doodle celebrates Saudi novelist Abdul Rahman Munif

Google has celebrated Saudi author, journalist and cultural critic Abdul Rahman Munif with a Doodle on his 90th birthday.

"He won two distinguished awards for his writings, including the Al-Owais Cultural Award in 1989 and the Award of Cairo Gathering for Arab Creativity in Novel Writing in 1998," according to Google's tribute to the writer.

Munif was born on May 29, 1933, in Jordan's Amman. He moved to Iraq to study law in 1952. He left Iraq and later graduated from Cairo University in Egypt. He earned his PhD in petroleum economics at the University of Belgrade in 1961.

Munif had a career in the oil industry as an economist in Baghdad, and later for the Oil Ministry in Syria and the OPEC, according to Google.

He took an interest in writing during his childhood and believed “the mission of literature is to increase awareness”, it added.

Munif lived in Iraq and was an editor at the monthly periodical, al-Naft wa al-Tanmiyya (oil and development), Google said in its tribute post.

Munif's first novel, Al Ashjar wa-ightiyal Marzuq (Trees and the Assassination of Marzooq), came out in 1973. His best-known work is the quintet Mudun al-Milh (Cities of Salt, 1984-1989), which describes how the Arab world changed during the oil era.

Some of Munif’s 15 novels and nine non-fiction books have been translated into over 10 languages.

He died in Syria's Damascus on January 24, 2004, at the age of 71.

What is a Doodle?

Google says Doodle "are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists".

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