Acclaimed novels ‘reflect the concerns in contemporary Arab society’
The longlist for the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction has been announced and includes seven female authors – the highest number in the prize’s history – and novels by authors from nine countries, including Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq and Morocco.
Two of the authors on the list – Lebanon’s May Menassa and Syria’s Shahla Ujayli – have previously been shortlisted for the prize, which was won last year by Jordanian-Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah for The Second War of the Dog.
A further four, including Saudi Arabia’s Omaima Abdullah Al-Khamis and Algeria’s Waciny Laredi, have been longlisted previously. Menassa’s longlisted novel,
I Killed My Mother to Live, tells the story of a young woman with autism, struggling to come to terms with a trauma from childhood, while Ujayli’s
Summer with the Enemy, which is set largely in Syria and Germany, explores the different lives of three generations of women.
The longlist includes novels about the history of modern Iraq, the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war, and the journey of a group of Ethiopian Jews emigrating to Israel.
“The novels selected for the longlist this year arise from different experiences and stylistic choices, ranging from the historical to a contemplative kind of realism; from the autobiographical to the documentary; and from extended to economic narrative prose,” said chairman of the judges, Moroccan critic Charafdin Majdolin.
“This may be because the authors come from different generations, or from different parts of the Arab world. The novels in the last analysis reflect intersecting human pain and disappointment as well as common aspirations.”
Prof Yasir Suleiman, the chairman of the board of trustees, said the selected novels are reflective of the various concerns in Arab society today, even those which were set in the wider world.
“Trauma, separation and disruption permeate these novels,” Prof Suleiman said. “The female voice in its multiple diversities resonates in these novels, as do the voices of different generations of Arab writers from different regions of the Arabic-speaking world.
“This is a strong list of established writers and new ones, and it attests to the continued rise of the novel as an uncontested platform of Arab fictional creativity.”
The shortlist will be announced on February 5 and the winner will collect the award at a ceremony which will be held on April 23 in Abu Dhabi, on the eve of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
The six shortlisted authors will each receive Dh37,000, while the winning author will collect a further Dh184,000.
The winning novel will also be translated into English, in line
with the International Prize for Arabic Fiction’s commitment to increasing the reach of Arabic fiction.
Previous winning novels which were translated into English include Destinies: Concerto of the Holocaust
by Palestinian author Rabai al-Madhoun and Iraqi novelist Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad.
Saadawi’s book was subsequently shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize last year.