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Seems like today is a day of award announcements . . . The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (aka, the Arab Booker) started five years ago as a way of bringing more international attention to great works of arabic literature. So far, they’ve given the award to five titles (two won last year), and all five—Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher, Azazel by Youssef Ziedan, Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles by Abdo Khal, The Arch and the Butterfly by Mohammed Achaari, and The Doves’ Necklace by Raja Alem—have all found English language publishers. (A number of these books are coming out in 2012, which is why you might not have heard of them yet.)
The six shortlisted authors (which will be announced on December 7th), each receive $10K, and the winning author (announced March 27th, right before the start of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair), receives an additional $50K.
Thirteen novels are on this year’s longlist, including the new book from 2009 winner Youssef Ziedan, books from Jabbour Douaihy, Habib Slmi, and Rabee Jaber, who were all on the shortlist in the past, and Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, who was longlisted in 2009. (Interesting & encouraging to see some repeat authors on the list.)
There’s not a lot of info available about the books themselves on the Arabic Fiction site, but if I find descriptions somewhere else, I’ll put them up in a separate post. I’m sure there will be a lot more info about the six finalists, but for now, here’s a list of all the books in the running:
Sarmada by Fadi Azzam (Syria)
Paving the Sea by Rashid al-Daif (Lebanon)
The Vagrant by Jabbour Douaihy (Lebanon)
Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge by Ezzedine Choukri Fishere (Egypt)
The Druze of Belgrade by Rabee Jaber (Lebanon)
The Unemployed by Nasr Iraq (Egypt)
Toy of Fire by Bashir Mufti (Algeria)
Under the Copenhagen Sky by Hawra al-Nadawi (Iraq/Denmark)
Suitcases of Memory by Sharbel Qata (Lebanon)
Nocturnal Creatures of Sadness by Mohamed al-Refai (Egypt)
The Women of al-Basatin by Habib Selmi (Tunisia)
The Amazing Journey of Khair al-Din ibn Zard by Ibrahim al-Zaarur (Jordan)
The Nabatean by Youssef Ziedan (Egypt)
And here’s a quote from the 2012 Chair of Judges about the longlist: “The fifth cycle of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction takes place in exceptional circumstances, with many Arab uprisings against despotic regimes which have been entrenched in most regions of the Arab world for long decades. Without actually asserting that the novels nominated for this prize cycle directly prophesy the Arab Spring, we can say that many of them paint a picture of the stifling conditions prevalent before the explosion of uprisings. They take the reader into the underground world of the secret police and portray the thirst for freedom of many of their heroes and secondary characters, at the same time exposing the opportunism of those who co-operate with those secret forces.”
Can’t wait to find out more . . . And hopefully be able to read a few of these books.
Reviewed by Jeremy Osner
“The small stone plaza was floating in the midday heat. The Christ of Elqui, kneeling on the ground, his gaze thrown back on high, the part in his hair dark under the Atacaman sun—he felt himself falling into an ecstasy.. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
