The Lotus Prize for Literature (also known as Lotus International Reward for Literature or The Lotus Prize for African and Asian Literature) was a literary award presented annually to African and Asian authors by the Afro-Asian Writers' Association (also known as Association of Asian and African Writers).
The Bureau, as the Association was initially known, was founded in Sri Lanka in 1958. In 1962 it moved to Cairo with Youssef El-Sebai elected general secretary. The Bureau began to publish Lotus Magazine, a forum for short-stories, poetry, book reviews and literary essays. The inaugural Lotus Prize was given in 1969 to Alex La Guma who was living in exile in London at the time. After the assassination of its secretary-general, the Bureau moved to Beirut, then Tunisia, and finally came back to Cairo. former Arab League secretary-general Lutfi El-Kholi became its secretary-general and when he died, the movement began to falter.