Longlist, judges and dates announced for International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2017

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The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) has today, Monday 16 January 2017, revealed the longlist of 16 novels in contention for the 2017 prize. The novels selected were chosen from 186 entries from 19 countries, all published within the last 12 months. The longlist was chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by Palestinian novelist Sahar Khalifa.

Of the 16 authors chosen, many are recognisable names with three having been shortlisted for the Prize previously – Mohammed  Hasan Alwan, Sinan Antoon and Amir Tag Elsir­ – and a further five previously longlisted – Renée Hayek, Ismail Fahd Ismail, Abdul-Kareem Jouaity, Elias Khoury and Mohammed Abdel Nabi. Their repeated recognition by the Prize demonstrates the enduring quality of their writing.

Yassin Adnan, although a well-known poet, makes his first appearance on the list with his debut novel, Hot Maroc. Meanwhile, Sultan Al Ameemi began writing his longlisted book, One Room Is Not Enough, at the 2014 Nadwa – an annual writing workshop for talented, emerging writers that is supported by the Prize. Other Nadwa attendees on the list include Ali Ghadeer and Mohammed Hasan Alwan, who is the youngest writer to be selected. This year’s successful authors represent 10 countries across the Arab world and range in age from 37 to 76.

The full 2017 longlist, with author names in alphabetical order, is as follows:

Author	Title	Country of origin	Publisher
Yassin Adnan	Hot Maroc	Morocco	Dar al-Ain
Sultan Al Ameemi	One Room Is Not Enough	UAE	Difaf Publishing
Mohammed Hasan Alwan	A Small Death	Saudi Arabia	Dar Al Saqi
Sinan Antoon	Index	Iraq	Al-Jamal
Najwa Binshatwan	The Slaves' Pens	Libya	Dar Al Saqi
Amir Tag Elsir	The Resort of the Enchantress	Sudan	Dar Al Saqi
Ali Ghadeer	Swastika	Iraq	Dar wa Maktabat Sutur
Renée Hayek	The Year of the Radio	Lebanon	Dar Tanweer, Lebanon
Zuheir al-Hiti	Days of Dust	Iraq	Dar Tanweer, Tunis
Ismail Fahd Ismail	Al-Sabiliat	Kuwait	Nova
Abdul-Kareem Jouaity	The North Africans	Morocco	Al-Markez al-Thaqafi al-Arabi
Tayseer Khalf	The Slaughter of the Philosophers	Syria	Arabic Scientific Institute for Research and Publishing
Elias Khoury	Children of the Ghetto – My Name is Adam	Lebanon	Dar al-Adab
Mohammed Abdel Nabi	In the Spider's Chamber	Egypt	Dar al-Ain
Saad Mohammed Rahim	The Bookseller's Murder	Iraq	Dar wa Maktabat Sutur
Youssef Rakha	Paolo	Egypt	Dar Tanweer, Egypt

The 2017 judges are: Sahar Khalifa (Chair), a Palestinian novelist; Saleh Almani, a Palestinian translator; Fatima al-Haji, a Libyan academic, novelist and broadcaster; Sahar ElMougy, an Egyptian novelist and academic; and Sophia Vasalou, a Greek academic and translator.

The 2017 Chair of Judges Sahar Khalifa comments on the longlist:

‘We chose the longlist of 16 from 186 novels submitted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The longlist novels are hugely varied in their subject matter and imagined worlds, embracing history, political and social themes and fantasy. As a whole they express the interactions, struggles and defeats, as well as the hopes and dreams, of the Arab world today.’

This is the tenth year of the Prize, which is recognised as the leading prize for literary fiction in the Arab world.