The names of the six shortlisted authors for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2012 were revealed at a press conference in Cairo, Egypt, the 11th of January.
The six shortlisted titles were chosen from a longlist of 13, announced in November 2011, selected from 101 submissions from 15 countries across the Arab world.
2012 marks the fifth anniversary of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Since its inception, it has become a leading cultural event in the Arab world and is respected for its unwavering commitment to independence, transparency and integrity.
The six shortlisted authors and titles are :
1/Jabbour Douaihy, Lebanese, and his book The Vagrant (Dar al-Nhar ).
Jabbour al-Douaihy was born in Zgharta, northern Lebanon, in 1949. He holds a PhD degree in Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne and works as Professor of French Literature at the University of Lebanon. To date, he has published seven works of fiction, including novels, short stories and children’s books. His novel June Rain was shortlisted for the inaugural IPAF in 2008, and will be published in English by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing in October 2012.
The Vagrant provides a realistic, engaging portrayal of the Lebanese civil war through the eyes of a young man who finds himself uprooted by the conflict. The hero represents the crisis of the Lebanese individual imposed upon by a sectarian reality. We follow his struggle to belong as he faces unfamiliar situations and conflicts in a society that considers him an outsider.
2/Rabee Jaber, Lebanese, and his book The Druze of Belgrade (Al-Markez al-Thaqafi al-Arabi).
Lebanese novelist and journalist Rabee Jaber was born in Beirut in 1972. He has been editor of Afaq, the weekly cultural supplement of Al-Hayat newspaper, since 2001. His first novel, Master of Darkness, won the Critics’ Choice Prize in 1992. He has since written 16 novels, including: Black Tea; The Last House; Yousif Al-Inglizi; The Journey of the Granadan (published in German in 2005), Berytus: A City Beneath the Earth (published in French by Gallimard in 2009) and America, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2010.
The Druze of Belgrade : After the 1860 civil war in Mount Lebanon, a number of fighters from the religious Druze community are forced into exile, travelling by sea to the fortress of Belgrade on the boundary of the Ottoman Empire. In exchange for the freedom of a fellow fighter, they take with them a Christian man from Beirut called Hana Yaaqub; an unfortunate egg seller who happens to be sitting at the port. The Druze of Belgrade follows their adventures in the Balkans, as they struggle to stay alive.
3/ Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, Egyptian, and his book Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge (Dar al-Ain).
Ezzedine Choukri Fishere is an Egyptian writer and diplomat. Born in Kuwait in 1966, he grew up in Egypt, where he graduated from Cairo University in 1987 with a BA in Political Science. After graduation, he attended a number of universities in France and Canada and attained an International Diploma in Administration from The National School of Administration, Paris (1990-92). He went on to gain a Masters in International Relations from Ottawa University (1992-95) and a doctorate in Political Science from Montreal University (1993-98). He currently teaches political science at the American University in Cairo, but also lectures at a number of other universities. In addition, he writes political articles for several Arabic, English and French periodicals and newspapers.
Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge is a novel about alienation in its various forms and senses: the hero who doesn’t belong; his second wife, torn between professional ambition and a desperation to give her husband the impression she belongs in his world; his son, with whom he has limited communication; his granddaughter, uncertain where she belongs, and his Egyptian friend, who discovers that neither his children nor his Cuban-American-Lebanese wife belong to his world. All these characters are linked by their relationship with the protagonist, who draws them together by inviting them to his granddaughter’s birthday party, at which he intends to convey some sad news.
4/ Nasser Iraq, Egyptian, and his book The Unemployed (Al-Dar al-Masriya al-Lubnaniya)
Nasser Abelfatah Ibrahim Iraq graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo University, in 1984. He has worked in cultural journalism in Egypt and co-founded the Dubai Al-Thaqafiya magazine where he has been managing editor since 2004. He has published a number of books, including: A History of Journalistic Art in Egypt (2002), which won the Ahmad Bahaa al-Din Prize in its first year; Times of the Dust (2006); From the Excess of Love (2008); The Green and the Damaged (2009) and The Unemployed (2011). He currently works as Cultural and Media Co-ordinator for the Foundation of Culture and Science Symposium in Dubai.
The Unemployed tells the story of a young, educated Egyptian man from a middle-class family who, like so many others, is forced to look for work in Dubai due to the lack of opportunity in Cairo. In Dubai, he discovers an astonishing world filled with people of all nationalities and he experiences mixed treatment from his friends, relations and acquaintances. And then, just as he falls in love with an Egyptian girl, he finds himself imprisoned for the murder of a Russian prostitute…
5/Bashir Mufti, Algerian, and his book Toy of Fire (Al-Ikhtilef),
Bashir Mufti is a writer and journalist, born in 1969 in Algiers, Algeria. He has published a number of short story collections and novels, including: Archipelago of Flies (2000); Witness of the Darkness (2002); Perfumes of the Mirage (2005); Trees of the Resurrection (2007) and Maps of Nightly Passion (2009). Some of his works have been translated into French. He often writes articles in the Arabic press and works in Algerian television as assistant producer of the cultural programme Maqamat.
Toy of Fire is the story of a meeting between the novelist, Bashir Mufti, and a mysterious character called Rada Shawish, who presents Mufti with a manuscript containing his autobiography. Shawish’s goal in life has always been not to turn out like his father, who ran an underground cell in the seventies and committed suicide in the eighties. However, circumstances have driven him to follow in his father’s footsteps, resulting in him becoming a leading member of a secret group of his own.
6/ Habib Selmi, Tunisian, and his book The Women of al-Basatin (Dar al-Adab).
Habib Selmi was born in al-’Ala, Tunisia, in 1951. He has published eight novels and two collections of short stories. A number of the stories have been translated into English, Norwegian, Hebrew and French and his novels have been translated into English, French, German and Italian. His first novel, Jabal al-Anz (Goat Mountain) and Ushashaqq Baya (Bayya’s Lovers) were published in French translation in 1999 and 2003. His other novels include Surat Badawi Mayyit (Picture of a Dead Bedouin), 1990, Matahat al-Raml (Sand Labyrinth), 1994, Hufar Dafi’a (Warm Pits), 1999, and Asrar ‘Abdallah (Abdallah’s Secrets), 2004. His novel the Scents of Marie-Claire was shortlisted for IPAF in 2009. An English translation of the book was published by Arabia Books this year. Habib Selmi has lived in Paris since 1985.
The Women of Al-Basatin is an intimate portrayal of the daily lives of a modest family living in the Al-Basatin district of Tunis in Tunisia. Through the stories of this small matriarchal environment, we observe the contradictions of the wider Tunisian society, exposing a world in flux between burdensome religious traditions and a troubled modernity.
There’s one more arabic author, we, at Best-seller to Box-office, want to talk to you about, even though she is not shortlisted in the above Prize. Her name is Zena el Khalil and her non fiction/literary memoir title « Beirut, I love you » has been sold all over the world, including UK, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Sweden, Italy and the United States.
Zena el Khalil has written a memoir about her love affair with Beirut. Beirut, the city that she describes as at times a carnival and at times a coffin is literally the pulsating heart of the book. Beirut in all its splendour, chaos, decadence, damaged, downfallen and downtrodden yet resilient, full of energy, willpower and joie de vivre. Beirut as a crazy, wild, unpredictable part of everything and every experience that marks our narrator’s life and ultimately makes her who she is today. Zena el Khalil talents are many and she is active as a visual artist and also writer, she started writing a blog during the war that marked the summer of 2006 which was in turn picked and actively followed by both The Guardian and Der Spiegel. Zena has never looked back and she continues to write about her life and her love affair with this multi faceted city, symbolic of so much too so many. She has since become a TED fellow and also spoken at the Nobel Peace Centre in Norway.
The book has been optioned for film by Vivo Film, a production company that has had a great recent success with Le Quattro Volte (Critics choice in Time Out Mag, NY Times critics pick). There is a preliminary movie trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tDcbvOrYbE
Her artwork is very popular and she has had major pieces auctioned at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
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