Sinan Antoon, Jana Elhassan, Mohammed Hassan Alwan, Ibrahim Issa, Saud
Alsanousi and Hussein Al-Wad are today, Wednesday 9
January, announced as the six authors shortlisted for the 2013 International
Prize for Arabic Fiction. Their names were revealed at a press conference held in Tunis, Tunisia, by the previously
anonymous Judging Panel, chaired by the Egyptian writer and academic Galal
Amin.
This year's shortlist reveals
a number of varied thematic concerns, which lie at the heart of the Arab
reality of today. These include, amongst others: religious extremism; the lack
of tolerance and rejection of the Other; the split between thought and
behaviour in the contemporary Arab personality; the Arab woman's frustration
and her inability to break through the social wall built around her; the laying
bare of the corrupt reality and hypocrisy on social, religious, political and
sexual levels.
The 2013 Judging
Panel was also announced during the press conference, held at Tunis’
prestigious Municipal Theatre.
The Judges are:
Egyptian academic and writer Galal Amin (Chair); Lebanese academic and critic
Sobhi al-Boustani; Ali Ferzat, who is head of the Arab Cartoonists' Association, and
owner and chief editor of the independent Syrian daily newspaper Al-Domari; Polish academic and Professor of Arabic Literature at the
Arts College of the Jagiellonian University of Cracow, Barbara
Michalak-Pikulska, and Professor Zahia Smail Salhi, specialist in Arabic
Literature Classical and Modern and Gender Studies at Manchester University.
The six
shortlisted titles were chosen from a longlist of 16, announced in December
2012. The novels were selected from 133 entries from 15 countries, published in
the last 12 months. The shortlisted novels are, in alphabetical order:
Title
|
Author
|
Nationality
|
Publisher
|
Ave Maria
|
Sinan Antoon
|
Iraqi
|
Al-Jamal
|
I, She and Other Women
|
Jana Elhassan
|
Lebanese
|
Arab Scientific
Publishers
|
The Beaver
|
Mohammed
Hassan Alwan
|
Saudi
Arabian
|
Dar al-Saqi
|
Our Master
|
Ibrahim Issa
|
Egyptian
|
Bloomsbury
Qatar Foundation
|
The Bamboo Stick
|
Saud Alsanousi
|
Kuwaiti
|
Arab Scientific
Publishers
|
His Excellency the Minister
|
Hussein Al-Wad
|
Tunisian
|
Dar al-Janub
|
Chair of Judges Galal Amin
comments: 'The members of the committee feel extremely pleased that they were
able to select an excellent shortlist of newly written Arabic novels, which
bring to the fore several evolving talents around the Arab world. The committee
is gratified to note that outstanding creativity is common across Arab
countries and generations of writers.'
Jonathan Taylor, Chair of the
Board of Trustees, comments: ‘We're delighted to welcome and honour six new
writers for the Prize. Their works have been selected by our Judges for their
outstanding quality and it is a great pleasure to be able to bring them to the
attention now of a wider Arabic audience and, in due course, to international
readership.’
The
International Prize for Arabic Fiction is awarded for prose fiction in Arabic
and each of the six shortlisted finalists receives $10,000, with a further
$50,000 going to the winner. It was launched in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in April
2007, and is supported by the Booker Prize Foundation in London and funded by
the TCA Abu Dhabi in the UAE, who were announced as the new sponsor of the
Prize in September 2012.
The
winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2013 will be announced at
an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 23 April 2013, on the eve of the Abu Dhabi
International Book Fair. An English translation of the winning novel is
guaranteed for the winner. All five previous winners of the Prize have secured
English publishing deals for their novels.
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