Eight emerging writers - four men and four women - from eight Arab countries yesterday began the writers' workshop  known as the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) Nadwa, held annually in Abu Dhabi.

This year's Nadwa is led by two mentors:  Moroccan writer Mohammed Achaari - joint winner of IPAF (often referred to as the Arabic Booker) in 2011 for his novel The Arch and the Butterfly - and Lebanese author May Menassa, shortlisted in IPAF's first year, 2008, for Walking in the Dust.

The eight emerging writers participating in the Nadwa are Ayman Otoom (Jordan b1972); Hicham Benchchaoui (Morocco b1976); Samir Kacimi (Algeria 1974); Noha Mahmoud (Egypt b1980); Lulwah al-Mansuri (UAE 1979); Bushra al-Maqtari (Yemen b1979);  Abdullah Mohammed Alobaid (Saudi Arabia b1984), and Nasrin Trabulsi (Syria). (Full biographical details are below)

Following the success of the first-ever Banipal Book Club Short Story Circles held in November 2012 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Book Club organised a second session of Story Circles last week at Kensington Central Library.

Like last year's event at the V and A, the well-attended  Short Stories from the Arab World was part of the Nour Festival of contemporary art, film, literature, music and performance from the Middle East and North Africa. The Festival is being held in venues throughout the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea from 1 October to 30 November.


The three stories translated from Arabic which were read and discussed during the evening are downloadable from the Banipal magazine website. They are Mordechai's Moustache and his Wife's Cats by Palestinian author Mahmoud Shukair translated by Issa J Boullata; Black Kohl . . . White Heart by Kuwaiti writer Mona al-Shammari, translated by Sophia Vasalou; and Ali the Redby Luay Hamza Abbas of Iraq, translated by Maia Tabet.

Members of the audience were given copies of the two issues of Banipal and the Banipal Books volume in which the stories appeared. And they were kept well supplied with drinks and delicious Arab snacks in the breaks between stories. The discussions that followed each story were lively, the diverse audience contributing rich perspectives.

The event was chaired by Margaret Obank, publisher, cofounder and former editor of Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature. The stories were read by stalwarts of the Banipal Book Club, which was founded last year and meets monthly in the meeting room of the Banipal Arab British Centre Library of Modern Arab Literature (BALMAL) located at the Arab British Centre. Charis Bredin read the first story, Mordechai's Moustache and his Wife's Cats. Shukair is well known for his  gifts of satire and humour under occupation. These qualities are much in evidence in the title story of the author's first collection in English translation, published by Banipal Books in 2007.



Mordechai, a former soldier, and his wife Stella are middle-aged Israelis of modest means who are on their own now their  grown-up children have left home. Stella devotes herself to her three cats while Mordechai grows his handlebar moustache. But Mordechai grows annoyed with the cats, and she in turn resents his moustache. Mordechai decides to volunteer for military service at checkpoints. Posted to the Qalandiya checkpoint he has  his first close encounters with Palestinians.

"Conflicting ideas and feelings overcame him. He was almost ready to express his sympathy for these unarmed human beings waiting for a hand gesture from him," Shukair writes. "However, the security of the state was greater than all other considerations and this made him suppress his tender feelings; for these people – in the final analysis – were the enemies of Israel!" Mordechai sees the young men as potential saboteurs, possibly armed with suicide belts or machine guns.

But he can't stop  himself admiring the Palestinian women. "He cast direct looks at the bodies of the young women crowding at the checkpoint. He said to himself: 'The Palestinians have beautiful girls!' And quickly compared them with the girls of Tel Aviv, thinking: 'But the girls in Tel Aviv are more beautiful.'" The story ends with Mordechai agreeing to shave off his moustache - which the Palestinians had made fun of - if his wife will get rid of her cats. Their negotiating this agreement raises questions of negotiation more generally.

There was dark humour in Mona al-Shammari's story Black Kohl . . . White Heart, read by Aurora Tellenbach. The story appears in Banipal 47, the magazine's current issue, which has a Special Feature on Fiction from Kuwait. A voluptuous young woman, Tiba, has travelled from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait to be married off to a Kuwait man. She is horrified to find her spouse is "an overweight and feeble-minded simpleton who didn’t talk like grown men did, who ate like a child, and slept like a brute." Living in the extended family she is observed by her husband's young niece, the first person narrator of the story, who is bewitched by her beauty. "Her lips are always glossed with jujube lipstick. They’re swollen like red cherries ripe for plucking. Her deep black eyes are like chestnuts; the black kohl makes them wider, and lends languor to her gaze. Her skin is the colour of milk mixed with honey." The child innocently sees how she plots an escape from the arranged marriage, and the story ends with an ingenious twist.


Ali the Red, read by Celia Shenouda, was published in Banipal 37, in a Special Feature on Iraqi Authors. It was the most gruesome of the three stories, shot through with various forms of violence, yet having flashes of humour. The first-person narrator was at school 20 years earlier with four boys named Ali for whom the sports master had devised monikers. Ali was Red not because of any political affiliation but because of his ruddy complexion. Now the narrator is summoned to the coroner's office to identify the corpse of Ali, whose "forehead and half of his face had been gouged by bullets." The vividly recounted story is set among workers, some toiling like Ali in a quarry, others in the harsh conditions of oilfelds where they might be buried in collapsing well-heads. An Iraqi woman in the audience found the story a reflection of the everyday brutal killings that Iraq has been suffering for years.
report and photos by Susannah Tarbush

Sunday 1 December at 7.30 pm
at
St Luke's Church Hillmarton Road
London N7 9RE

Tube: Caledonian Road Buses: 17, 91, 259, 29, 253

VOX HOLLOWAY in association with
St Luke's Church, West Holloway
presents:



by Reem Kelani, Harvey Brough and Justin Butcher

and

songs of Spanish Exile
written and performed by Clara Sanabras

with the Elysian Quartet and the 70 Voice Community Choir, Vox Holloway

Tickets £12 Concessions £5 BOOKING INFORMATION 07970 785641 VOXHOLLOWAYN7@GMAIL.COM
VOXHOLLOWAY.COM

for further information read:
Vox Holloway raise their voices for Syrian refugees.

report and pictures by Susannah Tarbush

Compared to the cuisines of many other countries in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, the cuisine of Qatar is one of the least known internationally. Londoners had a rare and welcome chance to watch Qatari food being prepared, and to eat the delicious and colourful results, at two  Dishes from Qatar evenings held last on Tuesday and Wednesday last week at the  famous Notting Hill bookshop Books for Cooks. I was invited along to the Tuesday event.

The evenings featured Aisha Al-Tamimi, a leading Qatari cook, accompanied by a team from the Food Forum of the National Museum of Qatar. Aisha was partnered in her cookery demonstration by the well-known Lebanese-Syrian cook, food writer and consultant Anissa Helou. Aisha is the author of several books, which were display at the evening. Anissa's latest book is Levant: Recipes and Memories from the Middle East (Harper Collins, 2013).


Anissa and Aisha are lively characters with keen senses of humour, and their rapport with each other and with the audience enhanced an informative and entertaining evening.

The Dishes from Qatar evenings were part of the Nour Festival of Arts from the Middle East and North Africa, running in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea from 1 October to 30 November.

The evening was also part of  Qatar UK 2013 - a year-long programme of events to celebrate and develop the partnership between Qatar and the UK. The programme aims "to increase engagement between the people of both countries in the spirit of innovation, openness and learning."Qatar Museums Authority and the British Council are co-ordinating the programme of activities in both countries, in association with several other partners.  On the second Dishes from Qatar evening the guests included the Qatari cultural attaché in London and his wife.



The new National Museum of Qatar, currently under construction, is scheduled to be opened at the end of 2015, 40 years after the original museum was opened. The new museum is being built around the original museum, to architect Jean Nouvel's innovative design inspired by the desert rose. Nadya explained that despite its name, the desert rose is not a flower. Desert roses are rose-like groups of crystal found in desert regions.


The new National Museum will explore the history and the identity of Qatar and of its people. "One of its important features is a 70-seat auditorium for the Food Forum and kitchen demos. And we will also have the food culture programmes" Nadya said. "Tonight we are very happy to present the two special ladies: Anissa Helou - our National Museum of Qatar food consultant - and our famous Qatari chef Aisha al-Tamimi."

Nadya made various contributions to the discussions of Anissa and Aisha with the audience during the cookery demonstration, talking for example about the food culture around Ramadan, and about Qatar National Day held annually on 18 December. Ramadan foods include the traditional harees, a kind of porridge made of cracked wheat cooked with meat or chicken and then given a lengthy beating.



Coffee plays a central role in Qatari hospitality and guests at Dishes from Qatar were greeted with dates and small cups of fragrant Qatari coffee. They were given recipe sheets for the coffee and dishes prepared during the evening, as well as canvas tote goodie bags decorated with the UK Qatar UK 2013 logo. The bags contained fridge magnets and a hard-backed notebook with the logo, and a decorative little dallah made from golden wire and containing a sachet of coffee and spice mix with instructions on how to use it.

Holding a splendid traditional dallah, Aisha demonstrated how Qatari coffee is made and served. She placed a kind of brush in the spout of the dallah to strain ensure the poured brew from coffee grounds and spices. Some Qataris still use the traditional dallah, but nowadays thermos flasks are used to keep the coffee hot for hours.


Aisha made the coffee by boiling a lightly roasted coffee for around 10 minutes with saffron, cardamom, a spice mixture - including mastic, cloves and other spices - plus a little powdered milk to lighten the brew. The addition of powdered milk is not traditional, but Aisha said it is now the way most people in Qatar, and many people in Saudi Arabia, prepare coffee. She explained how a visitor's little cup of coffee will be refilled repeatedly until the visitor shakes the cup from side to side to indicate "enough".  


for further information on Qatari food activities follow @eatqatar on Instagram 

The beautifully-bound 92-page book is itself a work of art. Its concertina format somehow resonates with its theme of the Wall. It is accompanied by an exhibition of work from the book, shown so far in Arles and Paris.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and award-winning author Raja Shehadeh writes in his foreword to Keep Your Eye on the Wall: "When I opened the dossier prepared by the editors of this book in advance of publication, I found the photographs shockingly beautiful and evocative - by far the best I have seen of the Separation Barrier.”


The wall is referred to variously as the "security fence" by Israel, the "Apartheid Wall" by Palestinians, and the "Separation Barrier" or "Separation Wall" by almost everyone else. It is "one of the world's most emotionally charged and controversial constructions of the past ten years," says the book’s introduction. Construction started in 2002. When completed the Wall is expected to extend for 709 kilometres through the West Bank. This is more than twice the length of the Green Line, Israel's recognised border with the West Bank. A map shows the intricate twists and turns of the Wall's course.

“A series of concrete slabs, barbed-wire ‘buffer zones’, trenches, electrified fences, watchtowers, thermal-imaging video cameras, sniper towers, military checkpoints and roads for patrol vehicles have dismembered the cities of the West Bank and segregated them from occupied East Jerusalem,” says the introduction.“Symbolically, the wall in Palestine is this century’s Berlin Wall, albeit four times as long as that hated Cold War icon and more than twice as high.”



The Wall has attracted the interest of various Palestinian and foreign artists, such as Banksy, who have done art works and graffiti on its surface. These works are highlighted in for example the book Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine.

Keep Your Eye on the Wall has a different approach. It is not so much a book of art done on the wall itself as an expression of the artistic response of Palestinians and some others to the Wall. Six of its seven artist-photographers are Palestinian. Besides Steve Sabella they are Noel Jabbour, Raed Bawayah, Taysir Batniji, Raeda Saadeh and Rula Halawani. The seventh photographer is the German Kai Wiedenhöfer for whom photographing separation walls has been a major preoccupation since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Among the four writers featured in the book is the acclaimed Palestinian author Adania Shibli. Her contribution takes the form of a powerful disquieting short story, The Fence. Born in Palestine in 1974, Shibli lives between Ramallah and Berlin. Two times winner of the Qattan Young Writers' Ware - Palestine, Shibli is the author of two published novels and many short stories as well as narrative and art essays. 

Raja Shehadeh was an ideal choice as writer of the foreword. He has an intimate relationship with the landscape of the West Bank. His books include Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape(2007) - winner of the Orwell Prize - and Occupation Diaries (2012).

In mid-November Shehadeh and Penny Johnson won the 2013 General Prize at the MEMO Palestine Book Awards as editors of Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home.


Shehadeh writes in his foreword that each of the photographs in Keep Your Eye on the Wall is "a personal statement by the artist of what the land means to him or her, and the impact and implication of the presence on it of the wall Israel is building."

Shehadeh writes movingly of what the wall means for him, and asks: "How could it have been, that a developed country like Israel could build such a monstrosity." He sees the wall as being built not for security reasons but more likely as a "play for grabbing more Palestinian land, and for the economic benefits that accrue to those contractors and producers of concrete, surveillance equipment, reams of barbed wire, etc involved in its construction. It has been, by far, the largest economic project Israel has ever undertaken."

There are various ways of resisting Israeli efforts to claim and land, whether through settlements or the wall. The aritst in Keep Your Eye on the Wall are doing it through their art, "expressing their feelings with great skill and beauty and echoing the feelings of much larger segments of the Palestinian population that have to survive and make do with life in a divided, disfigured land," writes Shehadeh.

The exhibition of Keep Your Eye on the Wall is curated by Masasam Curatorial Projects, with curators Monica Santos and Sandra Maunac. It has works by Taysir Batniji, Rula Halawani, Raeda Saadeh, Steve Sabella and Kai Wiedenhöfer. The exhibition was shown in Arles from 1 July to 22 September and in Paris from 12 September to 2 October.

It is due to be shown at the Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai in Art Dubai 2014 and at the Contemporary Art Platform in Kuwait. Interest has been expressed by Goethe-Institut in Ramallah, and it is hoped the exhibition will be mounted in the USA at some point.

Rula Halawani will be exhibiting some of her photographs from the book at a collective show in Italy in 2014, and Sabella is also expected to have some pieces from Disturbia and Metamorphosis in a London show.

THE ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHERS

Noel Jabbour





Noel Jabbour was born in Nazareth in 1970 and studied photography and art in Jerusalem. She has exhibited in Europe, the Middle East and US and her work is in collections worldwide.
Her sequence of nine works in Keep Your Eye on the Wall is entitled Illusion.

Jabbour says in her artist's statement "you believe there is hope", given the reduction in the number of checkpoints and fewer soldiers on the roads between the big cities compared with previous stays in the West Bank. But "then you’re confronted with a bigger, higher barrier: the massive infrastructure of sophisticated control. You end up at the Wall. There is no escape from the ideological master plan behind it."

Raed Bawayah


Raed Bawayah was born in Qatana, Palestine, in 1971. He studied at the Naggar School of Photography in Musrara, Jerusalem. His work is in several collections. He lives and works in France and Palestine. In his compelling black-and-white portraits in his series Toward the Sky, Palestinian workers "climb toward the sky, landing on the Israeli side of the Wall." The Wall divides their village of Yamoun, next to Jenin, from Palestinian villages in the Galilee region of Israel. Thousands of Palestinians have moved to these villages to work. In his artist's statement Bawayah describes their grim lifestyle.

Kai Wiedenhöfer

I was very sorry to hear tonight of the death of the remarkable Palestinian psychiatrist Dr Eyad El-Sarraj. This is an interview I conducted with him in 2001, in which he spoke of the dire state of mental health in Gaza and on his training and experiences as a psychiatrist and how he came to found the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP).



Dealing with Palestine's Traumatized People
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 28 April 2001

The internationally-renowned Palestinian psychiatrist and human rights activist Dr Eyad El-Sarraj is deeply troubled at the impact Israeli actions in Gaza since October are having on the mental health of Palestinian women, men and above all children.

“In Gaza now every single person, adult or child, is traumatised to a different degree”, El-Sarraj told Saudi Gazette in an interview during a recent visit to London. “Do you know what the children’s preoccupation is now? Guns, terror, violence – nothing else – and they are very jumpy.”

Around half of Gaza’s 1 million inhabitants are less than 16 years old. The widespread feelings of fear and terror among children are causing numerous problems. There is a big increase in the number of children who suffer from bedwetting and insomnia, while in school children are finding it hard to concentrate and are showing rebellious attitudes.

For Dr El-Sarraj the current traumas of the younger generation are all too familiar. It was to help child victims of Israeli violence during the first intifada that he founded the Gaza Community Mental Heath Programme (GCMHP) in 1990.

“We have already lost a generation in the first intifada,” Dr El-Sarraj says. “That generation is poorly educated, even illiterate, and now a second generation is suffering from the same things – overcrowded schools, a backward curriculum, traumatised teachers, violence and hopelessness.”

In the first intifada many children were arrested, beaten, shot, exposed to tear gas and physically abused. They were left with lasting psychological damage, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, night terrors and sleep walking.

Many children witnessed their fathers being beaten by the Israelis and most of the Palestinians who were imprisoned were tortured. Unfortunately, some of the Palestinians who were tortured inflicted torture on others after their release.

 “We have what is called ‘identification with the aggressor’”, Dr El-Sarraj says. “When people come out of prison it is not only they who suffer, they make everyone around them suffer. They are isolated, paranoid, suspicious and aggressive and may be violent to women. When we started to treat children we found we could not treat them in isolation but must deal with the family as a whole.”

After the second intifada erupted GCMHP launched a Crisis Intervention Project to help victims cope with the traumas of being injured or witnessing relatives and friends being killed and injured, having their homes destroyed and being attacked by Israeli helicopter gun ships. Britain’s Department for International Development, the Canadian government and UNDP are among the foreign donors of the Crisis Intervention Project.

The project includes a free telephone hotline. “As Israel dissected the Gaza strip we could not move between clinics and centres and so we developed this hotline,” Dr El-Sarraj says. “A typical call to the hotline is from a mother suffering fear over her children –she may complain that her children’s behaviour has become violent and rebellious and that she cannot control them.” The hotline provides counselling and may arrange for therapy.

There are plans for GCMHP’s video department to produce a film, with the help of the Palestinian-British writer, film maker and producer Karl Sabbagh, on the current situation in Gaza and how GCMHP has responded to it. It is hoped that a version will be screened on British television.

As well as receiving international recognition for his pioneering work with GCMHP, El-Sarraj has been attracting much interest in recent weeks with his well-publicised call for Palestinians to adopt the path of non-violent resistance.

He sees non-violent resistance as a movement that would “liberate people in Palestine from fear, and liberate the Israelis from racism.” It would “start a peaceful dialogue with the people of Israel and would at the same time improve the situation for the Palestinians internally by advocating freedom of speech, the law, democracy, elections and so on.”

The most optimistic scenario he can see for the future is for such a movement “to join hands with the Israeli peace movement and friends everywhere in the world, so as to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from occupied land and recognise a sovereign Palestinian state”.

Through non-violent resistance the Palestinians could escape the trap they have been in for the past 50 years. “This trap always links the Palestinians with violence and portrays Israel as the one party that is seeking peace. Palestinian violence can be taken as an excuse to impose what the Israelis call ‘security’ – which means grabbing more Palestinian land.”

There are reports that a growing number of people in Gaza and the West Bank share this vision and there have been several large peaceful demonstrations, although the Israelis have responded with brutality, using for example stun grenades and tear gas against the demonstration by 600 Palestinian women near Ramallah in March. Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi was among the injured.

El-Sarraj is critical of both of the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority (PA). “The Israelis have made the very serious mistake of not apologising to the Palestinians for everything they have done, from uprooting to occupation. Only once they apologise can there be a process of reconciliation. What is needed is a courageous Israeli leader to say we hurt the Palestinians and we are sorry, please forgive us and let us live together.” As for the PA, people have felt almost alienated by its conduct over the past seven years, and the intifada has shown clearly that it has no clear strategy or policy.

“In the first intifada we knew what we wanted, but this time we don’t know if we’re working for peace or for war. There has been no direction from the leadership. There is confusion and chaos at the level of the masses and we don’t know where we’re heading.” Dr El-Sarraj and Haider Abdel Shafi applied to the PA to found a new political party called the Movement for Democratic Change, but the PA refused to grant them a licence.

Dr El-Sarraj’s dual passion for psychiatry and human rights goes back to his days of studying medicine in Alexandria, Egypt. He spent four months during his medical training working in a psychiatric hospital, “and this was my introduction not only psychiatry but to human rights. The patients there were treated worse than dogs. It was a terrible experience but I learned so much from it, and it was enough for me to decide I was going to be a psychiatrist.”

El-Sarraj spent five years training and working at the famous Maudsley Hospital in London, and then went back to Gaza where he was the only psychiatrist for what must be one of the most stressed and traumatised populations in the world. He started a government psychiatric hospital in Gaza, although it had only 32 beds, and in his private clinic were a further eight beds.

Six months after the beginning of the first intifada the Israelis got him ejected as he had started to speak out on the impact of Israeli oppression on children and had made contact with sympathetic Israeli psychiatrists who went to Gaza and spoke out against the Israeli occupation.

At a conference in Berlin in 1988 he happened to meet Barbara Harrell-Bond, then the director of the Refugee Studies Programme at Oxford University, and with her encouragement he went to Oxford and drew up the plans for GCMHP, which he founded two years later.

GCMHP is a non-profit non-governmental organisation which now has eight clinics, dealing with children, women and torture victims. The clinics give counselling, cognitive therapy and, where appropriate, medication. GCMHP includes an Empowering Women programme which helps women develop their economic independence and enhance their skills.

GCMHP has also tried to overcome the stigma against mental illness that is common in Palestinian (and wider Arab) society and which may deter people from admitting they have a mental symptom and from seeking help.

The work of GCMHP is of relevance not only to Gaza, but to the Middle East and beyond. Its two-year diploma course in community mental health, taught in conjunction with several foreign universities, is the only course of its kind in the Middle East. GCMHP has drawn up a five-year plan which is due to start this year and which needs around $3 million a year. This year there is a deficit of between $200,000 and $300,000 and for next year they are assured of only around half the funds. Funds come most from Scandinavian countries and the European Union. In the future GCMHP hopes to set up a Trust Fund or Waqf to meet its financial needs.

The five-year plan would develop the services to reach more people, would upgrade the staff and would train more people. It would also strengthen links within the region in areas such as human rights, women’s rights, children, torture and rehabilitation. Countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Sudan and Lebanon have serious problems in some of these areas, El-Sarraj notes.

In Britain GCMHP has a small support organisation which is funded by Lord Sainsbury’s Linbury Trust. “Lord Sainsbury told me ‘part of my heart is in Gaza’” El-Sarraj recalls. “He served with the British Army there and saw the whole tragedy of the Palestinians and the uprooting and the refugees.”

El-Sarraj points out that the GCMHP has itself been democratised. “Over the past year we have restructured it and we now have very efficient and active board of directors from Gaza plus an international advisory board of around 21 members”.

GCMHP has also delegated authority to staff in the different departments. “This takes time because in our tribal culture, where the boss or father figure who decides everything, people have to get used to the idea that it is their responsibility and their right to take decisions.”

Every two years GCMHP holds an international conference. The fourth one, in November 1999, was on women in Palestine. “We were planning that our conference this November should be on democracy and the Arab mind, but we decided to change the topic to reconciliation, trauma and peace,” Dr El-Sarraj says.

Unemployment is one of the most serious problems facing Gaza, and Dr El-Sarraj hopes that a software training and production project could provide employment. He points out that Israel and India are the second largest producers of software after India and thinks that Gaza has potential in this field.

“We don’t have any industry or agriculture to speak of. What we have is people and we could train their brains to produce software in this hi-tech age. I’ve already received promises from some quarters that they will support this and will help get us contracts with IBM Microsoft and other big companies.”

Although Dr El-Sarraj ardently hopes for peace, yet “in so many ways I fear peace when it comes, because all the energy of the Palestinians that is now directed against the common outside enemy will be directed against the internal enemy and if there is no internal enemy we will create it.” He worries that there will be a lot of violence within the community itself.

IPAF's 16-novel longlist is packed with heavweights - but includes only two women
by Susannah Tarbush 

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) - commonly known as the "Arabic Booker Prize" - today announced the longlist of 16 novels for its 2014 prize. The prize is worth a total of $60,000 to the winner: the $50,000 prize itself and  the $10,000 that goes to each of the six shortlisted books. The prize also guarantees the winning novel translation into English. IPAF is run with the support of the Booker Prize Foundation in London and is funded by the TCA (Tourism and Culture Authority) Abu Dhabi. The Prize is also supported by the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair and Etihad Airways

The longlist was chosen from156 entries from 18 countries, published in the past 12 months. The authors are from nine countries, with the highest number - three authors each - coming from Morocco, Iraq and Egypt.

For the second consecutive year a  Kuwaiti writer, Ismail Fahd Ismail, makes the longlist;  in 2013 Saud Alsanousi was the first-ever Kuwaiti to be longlisted for the prize, which he went on to win for The Bamboo Stalk. Kuwaiti fiction has been gaining a higher international profile recently, with the 47th issue of Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature having as its special focus Fiction from Kuwait. Kuwaiti novelist Taleb al-Rifai was chair of the IPAF judges in 2010.
 
IPAF 2014 longlist: 

Clouds Over Alexandria
Ibrahim Abdelmeguid (Egyptian)
Dar al-Shorouq

Love Stories on al-Asha Street
Badryah El-Bishr (Saudi Arabian)
Dar al-Saqi

The Bearer of the Purple Rose
Antoine Douaihy (Lebanese)
Arab Scientific Publishers

366
Amir Tag Elsir (Sudanese)
Arab Scientific Publishers

A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me
Youssef Fadel (Moroccan)
Dar al-Adab

The Season of Pike Fishing
Ismail Ghazali (Moroccan)
Dar al-Ain

Phoenix and the Faithful Friend
Ismail Fahd Ismail (Kuwaiti)
Arab Scientific Publishers

Tashari
 Inaam Kachachi (Iraqi)
 Dar al-Jadid

No Knives in this City's Kitchens
Khaled Khalifa (Syrian)
Dar al-Ain

God’s Land of Exile
Ashraf al-Khamaisi (Egyptian)
Al-Hadara

Ashes of the East: The Wolf who Grew Up in the Wilderness
Waciny Laredj (Algeria)
Al-Jamal

The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya
Abdelrahim Lahbibi (Moroccan)
Africa East

The Blue Elephant
Ahmed Mourad (Egyptian)
Dar al-Shorouq

The Edge of the Abyss
 Ibrahim Nasrallah (Jordanian –Palestinian)
 Arab Scientific Publishers

The Sad Night of Ali Baba
Abdel Khaliq al-Rikabi (Iraqi)
The Arab Institute for Research and Publishing

Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi (Iraqi)
Al-Jamal



There are only two women on the longlist: the Iraqi Inaam Kachachi and the Saudi Badryah El-Bishr. Since IPAF was first awarded in 2008 a woman has won only once: Saudi author Raja Alem, who was joint winner with Moroccan Mohammed Achaari in 2011 for her novel The Doves' Necklace.

As always the identity of the panel of five judges is being kept secret at this stage. Their names will only be announced, along with the IPAF 2014 shortlist, in  Amman, Jordan, on Monday 10 February.  The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday 29 April, the eve of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

The still-anonymous chair of the judges said: "The longlisted titles are extremely varied, their diverse themes and styles reflecting the unquestionable richness of Arabic literature. Dominant themes include the socio-political problems currently experienced in many parts of the Arab world, especially the violence and displacement inflicted upon religious and ethnic minorities.

"Techniques and voices within the books range from the traditional narration characterised by an omniscient author to innovative techniques in style and narration, all of which breathes fresh life into the Arabic novel."

This is the seventh year of IPAF, recognised as the leading prize for literary fiction in the Arab world. Professor Yasir Suleiman, Chair of the Board of Trustees, comments: "Seven years on, IPAF has gone from strength to strength. This year’s longlist contains a set of excellent works of fiction that testify to the quality of Arabic literature.

"The judges have toiled long and hard to produce this list which includes female and male novelists, young and more established writers and works that hail from different parts of the Arab world. It is enormously gratifying to witness the role IPAF has played in promoting Arabic fiction among Arab readers and international audiences through translation."

The longlist is studded with some of the best-known names in contemporary Arabic fiction including that of Syrian Khaled Khalifa whose longlisted work No Knives in this City's Kitchens won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in December. Kuwaiti Ismail Fahd Ismail, who turns 74 this year and is longlisted for Phoenix and the Faithful Friend, is regarded as the major pioneer of the Kuwaiti novel.


At the other end of the age-scale Egyptian Ahmed Mourad, who is 35 this year, and is longlisted for The Blue Elephant, is a filmmaker who used to work as Egyptian ex-President Husni Mubarak's personal photographer. He made his name with the 2007 bestselling political thriller Vertigo, published in English translation by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) in 2011.



Five longlistees have been previously nominated for IPAF. Amir Tag Elsir was shortlisted in 2011 for The Grub Hunter, Inaam Kachachi in 2009 for The American Granddaughter, Khaled Khalifa in 2008 for In Praise of Hatred, and Ibrahim Nasrallah in 2009 for Time of White Horses. Nasrallah was also longlisted in 2013 for  Lanterns of the King of Galilee. Waciny Laredj was longlisted , in 2011 and 2013 for The Andalucian House and Lolita’s Fingers.  Several of these writers have subsequently had their work published in English and other languages.

Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi has a previous connection to the prize, through having taken part in the IPAF Nadwa in 2012, under the tutelage of fellow-longlistees Inaam Kachachi and Amir Tag Elsir. The Nadwa, held in Abu Dhabi annually since November 2009, is aimed at emerging Arab writers. Two Arabic-English anthologies of new work produced during the Nadwa have been published so far.

IPAF has delivered on its aim of increasing the international reach of Arabic fiction. It  has guaranteed English translations for all its winners: Bahaa Taher (2008, for Sunset Oasis), Youssef Ziedan (2009, Azazeel), Abdo Khal (2010, Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles), joint winners Mohammed Achaari and Raja Alem (2011, The Arch and the Butterfly, and The Doves' Necklace), Rabee Jaber (2012, The Druze of Belgrade) and Saud Alsanousi (2013, The Bamboo Stalk).

Taher’s Sunset Oasis was translated into English by the Hodder and Stoughton imprint Sceptre in 2009 and has gone on to be translated into at least eight languages worldwide. Ziedan’s Azazeel was published in the UK by Atlantic Books in April 2012. English translations of Abdo Khal and Mohammed Achaari’s winning novels Throwing Sparks and The Arch and the Butterfly are due in Spring 2014, through Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing. 2013 saw the publication of Spanish translations of Baha Taher's Sunset Oasis (El Oasis) and Rabee Jaber's The Druze of Belgrade (Los Drusos de Belgrado) by Madrid-based publisher Turner.

 Spanish edition of Rabee Jaber's 2012 IPAF winner



The English translation of Raja Alem's The Doves Necklace is to be published by Gerald Duckworth and Co in the UK, and Overlook Press in the US, but the publication date is understood to have been postponed from autumn 2014 as Adam Talib and Katharine Halls are still working on their joint translation.  


The IPAF 2014 longlist press release put out by PR consultancy Four Colman Getty includes the following biographies and novel synopses:

Ibrahim Abdelmeguid is a writer from Alexandria, Egypt, born in 1946. He obtained a BA in Philosophy from Alexandria University in 1973 and left Alexandria to live in Cairo in 1975. He is the author of 14 novels and five short story collections. He also writes articles on literature and politics. His novels include: The Other Place (2004), The House of Jasmine (2005), The Hunter and the Doves (2006) and The Threshold of Pleasure (2007). He has also published a book about the Egyptian revolution, Days of Tahrir (2011). Four of his novels have been translated into French and five into English, as well as other languages. He received both the Egyptian State Prize for Literature and the Sawiris Prize for his novel In Every Week there is a Friday (2009). Some of his work has been adapted for television and film.

Clouds over Alexandria completes Ibrahim Abdelmeguid's trilogy about Alexandria, begun with No-one Sleeps in Alexandria followed by Birds of Amber. In these three novels - which can be read as a sequence or individually - Abdelmeguid describes life in the famous city, beginning in an era of openness to the wider world and ending at a time of closure to outside influences. The events of the novel take place in the 1970s, when the cosmopolitan spirit which has characterised the city throughout history has disappeared. In place of the melting pot of ethnicities, religions and cultures come intolerance and hatred, destroying Alexandria’s secular traditions. The city occupies a large portion of the imaginary space of the novel, in which the characters play out their parts to reveal the social and religious crisis of a city now bereft of its free spirit.
Badryah El-Bishr was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1967. She obtained a doctorate in Philosophy of Arts and Sociology from The Lebanese University in 2005 and worked as Assistant Professor at Al Jazeera University, Dubai, from 2010 -2011. In 1997, she began writing a weekly article for the Saudi magazine, Al Yamama, and became well-known for her articles: she was the first Arab woman to win the prize for the best newspaper column at the Arabic Press Awards in 2011. She has written an almost daily column for Al Hayat newspaper since 2009. She is the author of three novels: Hind and the Soldiers (2005), The Seesaw (2010) and Love Stories on al-Asha Street (2013), as well as three short story collections.

Love Stories on al-Asha Street is set in the 1970s, on al-Asha Street in the populous district of Manfouha, Riyadh. Three heroines are searching for their freedom: Aziza hopes to find it through love and imitates Soad Hosny, the Cinderella of Arabic cinema, falling in love with an Egyptian doctor because he speaks the dialect of black and white films. Wadha, a bedouin woman, flees from poverty through work in the women's market, becoming its most important trader. Atwa literally runs away from her tiny village, changing her name and fate, and finds independence in the new environment of Riyadh. Their story begins in the romantic period of black and white films and lovers' trysts on the rooftops, where people sleep outside. However, with the advent of colour television comes a wave of religious extremism, opposing the social transformations which have changed the city. One of its first victims is Aziza's young neighbour, Saad. Searching for his identity, he joins the radicals led by religious activist Juhayman al-Otaybi, who famously occupied Mecca’s sacred Grand Mosque in 1979.
Antoine Douaihy is a Lebanese novelist, poet and thinker, born in 1948. He completed his higher education in Paris, where he obtained a doctorate in Anthropology from The Sorbonne, in 1979, and remained in France until the mid-nineties. He is currently Professor in Cultural and Social Anthropology (the comparative study of civilisations) at The Lebanese University. His novels include: The Book of the Current State (1993), The Garden of Dawn (1999), Hierarchies of Absence (2000), Royal Solitude (2001), Crossing Over Rubble (2003) and The Bearer of the Purple Rose (2013).

The Bearer of the Purple Rose tells the story of a writer's arrest and imprisonment in ‘The Citadel of the Port’, a 700-year old Mamluk fortress built to guard the coast. The arrest of the writer, back from a long exile in the West, is a conundrum for all his friends, who see him as a quiet, peace-loving man. He is imprisoned in a bare cell, possessing only two high windows, impossible to reach, and a picture of the tyrant, who stares at him day and night. Perhaps his arrest confirms what his mother used to tell him: ‘Don't fear anything. What a man fears will happen to him.’ Painfully aware of his loss of freedom, he dwells on many things, including: memories from his time of exile; journeying between two worlds; old love and new love; his mother; the destruction of nature; the tragic nature of history; the strange coincidences of fate, and the courses taken by time and death.
Amir Tag Elsir is a Sudanese writer, born in 1960. He studied medicine in Egypt and at the Royal Society of Medicine in Britain. He has published 23 books, including novels, biographies and poetry. Amongst his most important works are: The Dowry of Cries, The Copt’s Worries and The French Perfume (all 2009) and The Crawling of the Ants (2010). His novel The Grub Hunter (2010) was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011 and has been translated into English and Italian.

366 is the love letter of one man to a woman who doesn’t even know he exists. The protagonist falls in love with Asmaa the moment he sees her at a relative’s wedding. Captivated, he begins a quest to find her, searching everywhere from wedding photographs to the street, the neighbourhood and the faces of other women. He even looks for her in horoscopes, in love stories and in his own vivid imagination. In his letter, he lays out details of his life – from the job that he gives up in order to search for her – to his entanglement in certain political issues. When he fails to find her, he even announces his symbolic death, signing his letter as ‘the deceased’, as a preliminary step to suicide.
Youssef Fadel is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter, born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1949. During the so-called ‘Years of Lead’ in Morocco, he was imprisoned in the notorious Moulay al-Sheriff prison (1974-75). He has published a number of plays and novels. His first play, The Barber in the Poor District, was made into a film directed by Mohamed al-Rakab in 1982. His novel Hashish (2000) won the Grand Atlas Prize, organised by the Embassy of France in Morocco, in 2001. A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me (2013) is his ninth novel.

A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me Aziz is a pilot at the air force base who loves flying and forgets his cares when he is up in the air. It is flying that he thinks of on his wedding night, rather his 16 year-old bride, Zina, waiting in the adjoining room. The following morning he leaves his house at the crack of dawn, not to return for 18 years. His wife, Zina, looks for him everywhere - in prisons, offices, cities and forests – asking questions and following false leads, only to be disappointed. However, one day – in the bar where she and her sister Khatima work – a stranger presses a scrap of paper into her pocket. It takes her on one last journey in search of her husband: to the Kasbah of al-Glaoui in southern Morocco, where Aziz crouches in a prison cell, having lost hope of ever being found. A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me is a fictional testament to the terrible period of Moroccan history known as 'the years of cinders and lead'.

Ismail Ghazali is a Moroccan novelist and short story writer born in the Amazigh village of M'Rirt in 1977. He holds a BA in Arabic Literature and works in the media. He has published two novels: The Murmuring (2001) and Purl of Dreams, Creak of Nightmares (2012, two novellas), as well as six volumes of short stories. His book, Garden of the Spotted Gazelle - which contains four short story collections - was shortlisted for the Moroccan Book Prize in 2012.

The Season of Pike Fishing A French saxophonist is invited by a Moroccan friend to visit the Aglmam Azgza lake in the Middle Atlas mountains, to try pike fishing. Once there, he finds himself dragged into a confusing maze, at the heart of which is the legendary place itself and the savage pike. He encounters many colourful and dubious characters including: Virginia from London; a blonde fisherman nicknamed 'pike-tamer' and a young hotel employee, who is investigating the tragic fates of those who have visited the lake since 1910. There is also a young girl at the lake, a scriptwriter, two actresses called Hagar and Sara, a piano player and so on... The Season of Pike Fishing is a novel within a novel and many separate narratives find a place within its structure.
Ismail Fahd Ismail is a Kuwaiti writer and novelist. Born in 1940, he has worked as a full-time writer since 1985. He graduated with a BA in Literature and Criticism from the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts, Kuwait, and has worked as both a teacher and in the administration of educational resources. He also managed an artistic production company. Ismail is regarded as the founder of the art of the novel in Kuwait. Since the appearance of his first novel, The Sky Was Blue, in 1970, he has published 26 novels as well as three short story collections, two plays and several critical studies. His support for a large number of short story writers and novelists and his encouragement of creative talent have had a significant impact on the Kuwaiti and Arab literary scene. 

The Phoenix and the Faithful Friend is the life story of Mansi Ibn Abihi (literally: ‘Forgotten One, Son of his Father’), who comes from a class of Kuwaitis called the bedun (‘without’) because they lack Kuwaiti citizenship. Released from prison after the liberation of Kuwait, he decides to write his life story, addressing it to the daughter he has never seen, Zeinab – born while Kuwait was under occupation - in the hope that she will get to know her father. Mansi recalls his sufferings as a bedun and tells his daughter of his family: of his mother, who preserves the family’s documents in the hope they can apply for citizenship and of his marriage to Ohood, a Kuwaiti, whose brother Saud refuses to accept the union of a bedun and a Kuwaiti. He writes about his life as a self-made young man and the invasion of Kuwait, when he was forced to join the Iraqi ‘people's army’, but managed to escape and join the Kuwaiti resistance. Finally he writes of his imprisonment following liberation, and his subsequent release.
Inaam Kachachi was born in Baghdad in 1952, and studied journalism at Baghdad University. She worked in the Iraqi media before moving to Paris to complete a PhD at The Sorbonne. She is currently the Paris correspondent for the London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat and Kol Al-Usra magazine in Sharjah, UAE. Kachachi has published a biography in Arabic, Lorna, about the British journalist Lorna Hales, who was married to the famous pioneering Iraqi sculptor Jawad Salim, and a book in French about Iraqi women's literature produced in times of war and hardship. She produced and directed a documentary about Naziha Al-Dulaimi, the first woman to become government minister in an Arab country, in 1959. Her first novel, Heart Springs, was published in 2005 and her second novel, The American Granddaughter (2008), was shortlisted for IPAF in 2009 and has subsequently been translated into English, French and Chinese.

Tashari deals with the tragedy of Iraqi displacement of the past few decades, through the life story of a female doctor working in the countryside in southern Iraq in the 1950s. The narrative also follows her three children, who now live in three different continents, particularly her eldest daughter who has also become a doctor and works in a remote region of Canada. The title of the novel, 'Tashari’, is an Iraqi word referring to a shot from a hunting rifle which is scattered in several directions. Iraqis use it as a symbol of loss and being dispersed across the globe. As a way of combating the dispersal of his own family, one of the characters, Alexander, constructs a virtual graveyard online, where he buries the family dead and allots to each person scattered across the globe his/her own personal plot.
Khaled Khalifa was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1964 and holds a BA in Law from Aleppo University. He has written many successful screenplays for TV series, as well as for the cinema. He is also a regular contributor to a number of Arabic newspapers. His third novel, In Praise of Hatred (2006), was shortlisted for IPAF in 2008, and longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013. It has been translated into several languages.

No Knives in this City's Kitchens is a profound exploration of the mechanics of fear and disintegration over half a century. Through the story of one Syrian family, it depicts a society living under tyranny with stifled aspirations. The family realise that all their dreams have died and turned into rubble, just as the corpse of their mother has become waste material they must dispose of in order to continue living. Written with shocking perception and exquisite language, from the very beginning this novel makes its readers ask fundamental questions and shows how regimes can destroy Arab societies, plundering lives and wrecking dreams. Khaled Khalifa writes about everything which is taboo in Arab life, with a particular focus on Syria. No Knives in this City's Kitchens is a novel about grief, fear and the death of humanity.
Ashraf al-Khamaisi is an Egyptian short story writer and novelist, born in Luxor in 1967. He works as an editor for Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida magazine. His story The Four Wheels of the Hand-Pushed Cart won first prize in a short story competition for writers from all over the Arab world, organised by the newspaper Akhbar al-Adab. He has published three short story collections and two novels: The Idol (1999) and God's Land of Exile (2013).

God’s Land of Exile is set in 'al-Wa'ara', an imaginary oasis in the Egyptian desert of al-Wadi al-Jadid. The main character, Hajizi, is over 100 years old and has spent most of his life working with his father Shadid, embalming the corpses of animals. Disturbed by the speed with which the living forget the dead, he longs for immortality and fears his own death and burial. When he hears from a passing monk that Christ rose from the dead and that righteous Christians rise from death, he decides to accompany the monk to join his brethren in the mountains. There he meets Christ, who tells him to wait for ‘The Comforter’ who will advise him how to achieve life after death. He returns home to the oasis and waits for instruction. When two of his close friends have died, he has a vision of his own, imminent death and, having not heard from The Comforter, contrives a plan to avoid burial. It is in his last moments that the Comforter arrives and shows him what he must do.
Waciny Laredj is an Algerian novelist, born in 1954. He settled in Paris in 1994 and is a Professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, as well as the Central University of Algeria. He has written a number of novels dealing with Algeria’s history and its harsh upheavals. For the past 10 years he has produced work on the tragedies of the Arab nation, questioning the sacred and static account of its history. His books are published in Arabic and French. He has won a number of prizes for his work, including the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature in 2007. He has been longlisted for IPAF twice – in 2011 for The Andalucian House and in 2013 for Lolita’s Fingers.


Ashes of the East (part two): The Wolf who Grew Up in the Wilderness sees Jazz, a young musician of Arabic origin, exploring his identity through a symphony he is composing. The different elements of the music reflect the harsh reality of his life in America, where he is regarded as a hostile Muslim Arab, as well as stories from the life of his grandfather, Baba Sheriff. Going through key moments of his family history, he reconstructs an unadorned picture of the beginning of the twentieth century: such as Baba Sheriff being carried on his mother's back, or the death of Baba Sheriff’s father, who was incarcerated in Lebanon’s Aliah prison before being strung up on the gallows in Beirut by order of the Ottoman ruler Jamal Pasha, nicknamed ‘the Manslayer’. Jazz goes back to a time shaped by the pursuit of European, rather than Arab, interests, touching on the influence of well-known historical figures: from Yusuf Al-Azmeh, who resisted the French in Syria, to the escapades of Lawrence of Arabia, Prince Faisal and Viscount Allenby. It is through his symphony, Ashes of the East - which he performs at the Brooklyn Opera - that Jazz finds release and brings to life a grandfather who was nothing short of a walking history book.
Abdelrahim Lahbibi is a Moroccan novelist, born in Safi, Morocco in 1950. He left Safi for Fez in 1967, where he obtained a BA in Arabic Language from the College of Arts and Human Sciences in 1970. He worked as a teacher of Arabic language and literature in secondary education from 1970-1982 and as a school inspector and curriculum co-ordinator from 1984 onwards. He has published three novels: Bread, Hashsish and Fish (2008), The Best of Luck (2010) and The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya (2013).

The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya A researcher stumbles across a manuscript and attempts to edit it, to make it into a doctoral thesis. Entitled The Journeys of 'Abdi, the manuscript is an account of one man’s journeys from Morocco to the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia in search of knowledge, written in the manner of Moroccan intellectuals such as Ibn Khaldun. ’Abdi’s journey turns into an examination of Arabic and Muslim society, with ’Abdi emphasising the need for Arabs to learn from Europe in order to achieve social progress. Split into two, The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya follows both ’Abdi’s search for knowledge as well as the narrator’s attempts to edit his manuscript.
Ahmed Mourad was born in Cairo in 1978. He studied cinematography at the Higher Institute for Cinema in Cairo, graduating in 2001. His graduation films The Wanderers, Three Papers, and On the Seventh Day won prizes for short film at festivals in the UK, France and Ukraine. His first novel, Vertigo, appeared in 2007, before being translated into English, Italian and French and made into a television series broadcast in Ramadan 2012. In 2010, Mourad published his second novel Diamond Dust, which was translated into Italian, followed by The Blue Elephant, in October 2012.

The Blue Elephant After five years of self-imposed isolation, Doctor Yahya returns to work at the Abbasiya Psychiatric Hospital in Cairo, where there is a surprise in store for him. In ‘West 8’, the department in charge of determining the mental health of patients who have committed crimes, he meets an old friend who reminds him of a past he is desperately trying to forget. Suddenly finding his friend's fate in his hands, Yahya's life is turned upside down, with one shocking turn of events following another. What begins as an attempt to find out the true mental condition of his friend becomes an enthralling journey to discover himself, or what is left of him.

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were evicted from their land in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in the Al-Wehdat Palestinian Refugee Camp in Amman, Jordan, and began his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked as a journalist and for the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation. Since 2006, he has been a full-time writer and has so far published 14 poetry collections and 14 novels. He is in the process of writing a Palestinian epic covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history, in seven novels. Three of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English, including his novel Time of White Horses (2007), which was shortlisted for IPAF in 2009. Three of his works have been published in Italian, and a novel each into Danish and Turkish. He is also a painter and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He has won eight prizes, among them the prestigious Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997. His novel Prairies of Fever (1985) was chosen by The Guardian newspaper as one of the ten most important novels written by Arabs or non-Arabs about the Arab world. In 2012, he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his writing. His 2012 novel Lanterns of the King of Galilee was longlisted for IPAF in 2013.


The Edge of the Abyss is  told through the voices of three characters whose lives are intertwined: a former minister, known for his corrupt practices; his lawyer wife, restricted by her association with him and a professor, whose personal interests dictate that he should serve the minister, but who at the same time seeks to fulfil his dreams of love through romantic adventures and becomes entangled with the minister's wife. Their stories intersect with the changes following the Arab Spring, which is drawing everyone to the edge of the abyss. The Edge of the Abyss depicts an Arab reality where legitimate and illegitimate ambitions are merged, as are the suffering of the individual and that of the community.

Abdel Khaliq Al Rikabi is an Iraqi novelist, born in Badra, Iraq, in 1946. He obtained a BA in Fine Art in 1970 and worked as a teacher for 12 years and as an editor for two magazines, Journeys and Pens. In 1987, his novel The Filter (1986) won the Eastern Fair Prize in Baghdad, while The Seventh Day of Creation (1994) received the Best Iraqi Novel Prize in 1995. It was also selected by the Arab Union of Writers in Damascus as one of the 20 best Arabic novels of the twentieth century and has been translated into Chinese. Some of his work has been adapted for the cinema: the 1985 film The Lover, was based upon his novel The Trials of Abdullah the Lover (1982) and the film The Knight and the Mountain (1987) was adapted from his short story Imagination. The Sad Night of Ali Baba (2013) is his seventh novel.

The Sad Night of Ali Baba continues Al Rikabi's imaginative retelling of the history of modern Iraq. Using the American occupation in 2003 as a starting point, he looks back at the defining social and historical events which have taken place in the country during the 20th century, from the Ottoman Empire to the British and American occupations. Focusing on the American occupation, he explores the different ways in which people have been affected; from those who have suffered random violence to those who have exploited occupation for their own benefit. He explores the explosion of repressed religious, racial and sectarian tensions in Iraq as a result of occupation, and the subsequent hatred, intolerance and desire for revenge.
Ahmed Saadawi is an Iraqi novelist, poet and screenwriter, born in 1973 in Baghdad, where he works as a documentary film maker. He is the author of a volume of poetry, Festival of Bad Songs (2000), and three novels, The Beautiful Country (2004), He Dreams or Plays or Dies (2008) and Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013). He has won several prizes and in 2010 was selected for the Beirut39 Festival, as one of the 39 best Arab authors below the age of 40. He took part in the annual IPAF ‘Nadwa’, or literary workshop for promising young writers, in 2012.


Frankenstein in Baghdad Hadi al-Attag lives in the populous al-Bataween district of Baghdad. In the Spring of 2005, he takes the body parts of those killed in explosions and sews them together to create a new body. When a displaced soul enters the body, a new being comes to life. Hadi calls it ‘the-what's-its-name’; the authorities name it ‘Criminal X’ and others refer to it as ‘Frankenstein’. Frankenstein begins a campaign of revenge against those who killed it, or killed the parts constituting its body. As well as following Frankenstein’s story, Frankenstein in Baghdad follows a number of connected characters, such as General Surur Majid of the Department of Investigation, who is responsible for pursuing the mysterious criminal and Mahmoud al-Sawadi, a young journalist who gets the chance to interview Frankenstein. Frankenstein in Baghdad offers a panoramic view of a city where people live in fear of the unknown, unable to act in solidarity, haunted by the unknown identity of the criminal who targets them all.

For the first time in the history of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, two translators share the £3,000 prize: British translator Jonathan Wright and American translator William Maynard Hutchins.

Wright wins the 2013 prize for his translation of Egyptian writer Youssef Ziedan's novel Azazeel, published by Atlantic Books. Hutchins wins for his translation of Yemeni author Wajdi al-Ahdal's A Land Without Jasmine published by Garnet Publishing (which issued this statement on the novel and its author when its deal to publish it was announced). The Arabic originals of both novels were in their different ways notably provocative and groundbreaking, and posed challenges for their translators.

An announcement on the winners issued today says: "For the first time the judges have selected two outright winning translators, instead of the usual winner and runner-up. Two enticing and finely translated novels, each in their very different way, captured the judges’ attention and passion, leading to the decision to share the prize this year."

In today's announcement of the winners the judges describe Wright's  translation of Azazeel as "a masterful achievement, deftly capturing the feeling of the original”. Hutchins's translation of A Land Without Jasmine is "a gripping page-turner from a gifted and original storyteller, superbly translated” 

The juding panel chose the winners from 21 books produced by 19 translators , published in English translation in the year prior to the award. Wright [pictured below] and Hutchins [pictured right] - two of the most productive Arabic translators - were the only entrants to have two translations submitted. In addition to their prizewinning translations, Hutchins was entered for The Diesel by UAE author Thani Al-Suwaidi (AntiBook Club), and Wright for Life on Hold by Saudi writer Fahd Al-Atiq  (AUC Press)

The Arabic originals of both novels caused controversies in their authors' home countries. Prize-winning author Wajdi al-Ahdal is famous for his controversial works, some of which have been banned in Yemen. At one point he was forced to leave Yemen for a period of time. Hutchins has inserted into his translation of A Land Without Jasmine sections of the novel that were excluded from the version published in Arabic in Yemen. In his Translator's Note in the novel Hutchins explains that he started with the 2008 Sanaa edition of the book published by Markaz Ibadi lil Darasat wa-l-Nashr. "I then checked my translation against the author's computer file and added three sexually explicit passages that had been deleted from the published version."

The Arabic original of Azazeel won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF - the "Arabic Booker") in 2009. Wright writes in his three-page Note on the Text in Azazeel that the novel "took the Egyptian and Arabic literary scene by surprise when it first appeared in 2008." Previous Egyptian writers had played with the history of ancient Egypt, but the brief Christian era of Egyptian history, which lasted for a few hundred years up to the Muslim invasion of 639 CE, "was a gap that Egyptian authors had avoided, either out of deference to the Coptic Orthodox Church or because the period appeared to offer little that would resonate with a  modern Arab readership." The response of the Coptic establishment to the novel was "immediate and vitriolic." Wright examines the storm around the novel, and Ziedan's responses.

The judging panel comprised the renowned Arabic translator Humphrey Davies (twice winner and twice runner-up of the Saif Ghobash Banipal prize) and Iraqi playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak (winner of the Arab British Centre Award for Culture 2013) - who each read the Arabic original of the novels as well as the English translation - plus prize-winning fiction writer Rajeev Balasubramanyam, and novelist and Peirene Press founder and publisher Meike Ziervogel.

The judges met in London in December, under the chairmanship of prize administrator Paula Johnson of the Society of Authors, to select the winning titles from the 21 entries.


Azazeel: 'enthralling, and flawlessly translated'

"Azazeel is an enthralling book," the judges say. "The author, and translator, have evoked, and re-evoked, a time, a region, and people that come alive on the page despite our distance from them. The conflicts of the day between tolerance and anathematization – so reminiscent of those of our own time – are seamlessly embodied in the events.

"The landscapes appear before us with palpable and luminous physicality and the protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses, naiveties and intuitive insights, hesitations and impetuosities combine a character as lifelike and as seemingly familiar as the subject of a Fayoum portrait. The translation is notable for its delicacy and well-judged restraint and deftly captures the feeling of the original.”

Azazeel's great strength "lies in its strangeness, a product of the state of mind of its narrator as he struggles with demonic possession and spiritual angst. In vivid, evocative prose, the author plunges us into fifth century Egypt, rendered three-dimensional and immediate in vivid, evocative prose. Ziedan has given us a story that works seamlessly on so many different levels; historical, theological, spiritual, and as a feverishly absorbing confession. A masterful achievement."

In all: "A beautifully crafted and evocative tale. Rich in description of the arid Syrian landscape and seeped in early history, Azazeel has been flawlessly translated making this an easily accessible story.



A Land Without Jasmine: an enjoyable read that preserves the soul of the original

The judges say that A Land Without Jasmine deals with many social and political issues such as the sexual repression of males in a conservative society and the corruption of public institutions yet it does so in the guise of a thriller that keeps the reader enthralled. The story is told by several characters whose accounts do not often tally with one another, leaving room for the readers to synthesise their own version of the truth.

 It is a novel which succeeds in addressing issues of sexual oppression and repression without sacrificing narrative tension. Through its use of multiple perspectives we are given a revealing insight into society, reminding us that no event, or place, has an objective existence or truth. Wajdi al-Ahdal is a gifted and original storyteller.

A Land Without Jasmine gives fascinating insight on life in Yemen, with a thriller-like plot that keeps the reader turning the page. In sparse, lucid prose with a tight narrative structure, the author paints a riveting portrait of sexual confusion, frustration and shame. The translation succeeded in creating an enjoyable English read and at the same time preserving the soul of the original.

Jonathan Wright

Jonathan Wright, who currently lives in London, studied Arabic, Turkish and Islamic History at St. John’s College, Oxford University. Between 1980 and 2009 he worked for Reuters news agency in countries across the Arab world and was also lead writer in the Washington DC Reuters bureau as well as chief sub-editor of the World Desk in London.  Between 2008 and 2011 he was managing editor of Arab Media and Society, an online academic journal run by the AUC (American University in Cairo).

Wright became a published translator of Arabic literature in the late 2000s and  has a remarkable record in terms of the number and quality of the translations he has done. In addition to Azazeel and Life on Hold his  translations of fiction and essays include Khaled el-Khamissi’s Taxi (Aflame Books, 2008, and BQFP); Hassan Blasim’s short story collections The Madman of Freedom Square (Comma Press, 2009) and The Iraqi Christ  (Comma Press, 2013); ; The State of Egypt, a collection of essays and articles by Alaa el-Aswany (AUC Press, 2011); Judgement Day by Rasha al-Ameer (AUC Press, 2012); Whatever Happened to the Egyptian Revolution by Galal Amin (AUC Press, 2013); and Sleepwalkers by Said Makkawi (to be published by Dar el-Shorouk).

Two of Wright's most recent translations will be published in 2014: Bahaa Abdelmegid’s Temple Bar (AUC Press) and Land of No Rain by Amjad Nasser (BQFP).

On two occasions last year Wright appeared at the Mosaic Rooms in London in conversation with an Arab author whose work he had translated. On the first of these occasion he was on stage with the Lebanese author Rasha al Ameer to discuss her novel Judgement Day. On the second occasion he was in discussion with the Iraqi writer Hasan Blasim, two of whose short story collections he has translated.

William Maynard Hutchins

William Maynard Hutchins is a prolific and award-winning translator of literary Arabic. He is a professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, USA. He began learning Arabic while teaching at the Gerard School for Boys in Sidon, Lebanon. He studied Arabic at Berea, Yale and the University of Chicago, and began translating Arabic literature during graduate school, starting with some of the epistles of al-Jahiz (Peter Lang). During his time teaching at the University of Ghana in Legon he began translating the plays of Tawfiq al-Hakim, and later published a two-volume collection (published by Three Continents Press). He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for Literary Translation in 2005-6 for his translation of The Seven Veils of Seth by the Libyan Tuareg author Ibrahim al-Koni (Garnet Publishing) and a second one in 2012 for New Waw, also by al-Koni (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas, January 2014)

In addition to A Land Without Jasmine and Diesel, Hutchins's translations of Arabic novels include Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street, and Cairo Modern by Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz (Anchor Books); Basrayatha: Portrait of a City by Muhammad Khudayyir (Verso, 2007); The Last of the Angels (Free Press, 2007), Cell Block 5 (Arabia Books, 2008) and The Traveler and the Innkeeper (AUC Press, 2011) all by Fadhil al-Azzawi; Return to Dar al-Basha by Hassan Nasr (Syracuse University Press); Anubis (AUC Press, 2005) and The Puppet (Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, 2010) both by Ibrahim al-Koni. His recent translations include a revision of his translation of Return of the Spirit by Tawfiq al-Hakim (Lynne Rienner Publishers), and The Grub Hunter by Amir Tag Elsir (Pearson African Writers Series, 2012).
Hutchins's translations have appeared on wordswithoutborders.org and brooklynrail.org and in Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature.


Prize to be awarded at 12 February ceremony

The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize was established in 2005 by Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature in English translation, and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, as the first worldwide prize for a published work of English literary translation from Arabic.  It is wholly sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and family in memory of his father, the late Saif Ghobash, a man passionate about Arabic literature and other literatures of the word.

The founding of the prize meant that for the first time Arabic joined the ranks of languages (most of  them European) with a literary translation prize administered by the Society of Authors.  The prizes are awarded at an annual ceremony, which for the 2013 prizes is to be held at 6.30 pm on Wednesday 12 February at 6.30pm Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London SW1. While the Saif Ghobas Banipal Prize is awarded annually, some of the other langauge prizes are awarded less frequently. In addition to the prize for Arabic translation, the 2013 prizes are awarded for translatoins from Dutch, French, German, Hebrew and Spanish

The ceremony, hosted by the Society of Authors and the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), will be introduced by Paula Johnson, Prize Administrator Society of Authors. The prizes will be awarded by Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the TLS, and there will be readings by the translators from their winning translations. Following this, poet and translator Dr Ian Patterson and author Adam Mars-Jones will be in conversation on aspects of literary translation

roundable on Arabic-English Literary Translation

At 2-4.30pm on Thursday 13 February, at the Arab British Centre at 1 Gough Square, London EC4,  the two winners of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize 2013, Jonathan Wright and William Maynard Hutchins,  will introduce a roundable on  Literary Translation Arabic to English. The roundtable is  hosted by the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature and will be chaired by Banipal Trustee Professor Yasir Suleiman

The Roundtable is free to attend, but prior registration is necessary. To register, please email Clare@banipal.co.uk

an Arabic Literature in English evening with the prizewinners

Also on 13 February, at 7.00 pm, an event followed by a reception will be held  in The Gallery of Foyle’s Bookshop at 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2.  The evening is hosted by Foyle’s and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature.

The Arabic Literature in English evening with prizewinning translators Jonathan Wright and William M Hutchins and their novels Azazeel and A Land Without Jasmine will be introduced by Banipal Trustee Paul Starkey. It will include readings from the novels.

Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize changes its cut-off date to 1967

The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize has from the inaugural prize in 2006 until 2013 had a cut-off date for the original Arabic editions of 35 years prior to entry to the prize. It  has now announced a significant change from the 2014 prize, with the cut-off date of the original Arabic extended back and fixed at 1967 - a year widely recognised as a “watershed” year for Arabic literature.
report by Susannah Tarbush

anthology launched on 5th anniversary of Israel's Cast Lead onslaught
by Susannah Tarbush 


Israel's 23-day Operation Cast Lead offensive on Gaza, which lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, caused massive destruction and killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza. Another 5,000 were injured. It was a particularly brutal chapter in the seemingly never-ending ordeals facing the people of Gaza. 

Now Just World Books of Charlottesville, Virginia, has published a groundbreaking collection of fiction, Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine, edited by Refaat Alareer. In their stories the young authors explore the lives of Gazans during and after Operation Cast Lead. 

The book's international launch in London, on the evening of Wednesday of last week, coincided with the fifth anniversary of the ending of Operation Cast Lead. The launch was held at a packed-out event in the P21 Gallery, with sponsorship from Middle East Monitor (MEMO) and the Arab British Centre. In the chair was author and former associate foreign editor of the Guardian newspaper Victoria Brittain.

The book's cover says: "These stories take us into the homes and hearts of moms, dads, students, children, and elders striving to live lives of dignity in one of the world's most embattled communities."

Gazans have constantly sought ways of overcoming their difficulties and isolation, and writing has played an increasingly vital role in this. Gazans have been adept in using social media, through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and online publications. And as Gaza Writes Back demonstrates, they are also increasingly writing fiction.



Gaza Writes Back brings together 23 stories by 15 young authors, all but three of them women. The number of stories was chosen so as to match the number of days Operation Cast Lead lasted. The Gaza Writes BackFacebook page  has been posting daily extracts from the stories.  The blockade of Gaza means that copies of Gaza Writes Back may not reach Gaza, where most of its writers are currently located.

In addition to the 23 stories, the book includes a photograph and one or two-page biography of each of the 15 contributors, with their personal statements on writing. Elham Hilles, for example, writes: "Writing is way of resistance through which I attempt to highlight the distress and agony of the Palestinian refugees in the wretched camps around my city." 

'telling stories is an act of life and resistance'

Refaat Alareer has an MA in Comparative Literature from University College, London University, and teaches at the Islamic University of Gaza. He is at present doing a PhD in Malaysia. His role in the book project was much more than that of editor: he is a creative writing teacher and a mentor to young Gaza writers, and was the prime mover in getting the book off the ground. In his introduction to the book he says: "Gaza Writes Back provides conclusive evidence that telling stories is an act of life, that telling stories is resistance, and that telling stories shapes our memories."  He is already planning further books of Gazan writing.

Refaat was able to take part in the P21 Gallery launch thanks to a Skype link to Malaysia, in which he was joined by one of the contributors to the book, Yousef Aljamal, who is like him pursuing university studies in Malaysia. The London launch was followed last Saturday by a launch in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur which Refaat attended in person. 

As well as editing the book, Refaat contributed two short stories: "House" and "On a Drop of Rain". Over the Skype link from Malaysia Yousef Aljamal read from his story "Omar X". The story is a tribute to his late brother and to his youngest brother, both of them called Omar. Yousef movingly explained the background to his story. The older Omar had joined a resistance group and was killed by the Israelis in an orchard on 7 March 2004 when he was not yet 18. Two years later Yousef's mother had another son, also named Omar, who is now eight years old and "very mischievous and very clever." 

Given the blockade of Gaza and the travel restrictions on its inhabitants Just World Books was unable to bring authors directly from there to London for the launch. But two contributors - Rawan Yaghi and Jehan Alfarra - are currently studying in Oxford, and they attended the event in person to read from their  stories and to take part in a Q and A session with the audience. 
  
In addition, a pre-recorded video of another contributor, Mohammed Suliman - who has three stories in the collection - was screened. Suliman has a BA in English Literature from the Islamic University of Gaza and a Master's degree in Human Rights from the London School of Economics. In the video he reads from his story "One War Day." 

Ain Media has posted this video and those of two other Gaza Writes Back authors on YouTube. The videos can be viewed in a 14-minute compilation, or as separate segments on the individual writers, Hanan Habashi, Mohammed Suliman and Samiha Elwan. Victoria Brittain thanked Gaza video maker Rushdi Sarraj for his help in making the videos.



Refaat prefaced his remarks to the London launch with two quotes from the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, "a source of inspiration to all Palestinian young writers". The first quote was: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” The second quote is: “Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit.” 

'pure Palestinian voices'

Refaat said: "This basically is what Gaza Writes Back is about." The collection "attempts to testify with pure Palestinian voices against one of the most brutal occupations the world has ever known." Its stories "endeavour to educate both ourselves as Palestinians, and the whole world. The young writers in the book strongly believe that there is a lot to learn because we believe that it is our moral obligation to educate ourselves to improve personally, individually, locally and globally in order to achieve peace and better understanding."
  
The book carries on its back cover and inside pages acclaim from prominent Palestinian and other activists and writers: Dr Ghada Karmi, Victoria Brittain, Ramzy Baroud, Jean Said Makdisi, Susan Abulhawa, Samah Sabawi and Michelle Cohen Corasanti. 


The 23 stories are diverse in theme, setting, form, type, and experimentation, Refaat notes in his introduction. Although the stories try to trace how young writers in Gaza reached to Operation Cast Lead, they include "Palestine as a whole as an attempt to refuse any kind of division. Among Palestinians, no matter where they are, there is an emphasis on the Right of Return. Some stories are about West Bank issues, such as the Separation wall, settlements, or Jerusalem. Some do not have a particular setting, to suggest that the story could happen anywhere in occupied Palestine, or even any people under occupation." 

All the stories were written in English except for two suspenseful stories by Nour al-Sousi. Her story "Canary" was translated from Arabic by Refaat Alareer, while Mohammed Suliman translated "Will I Ever Get Out?" 

Rawan Yaghi is in her first year studying Italian and linguistics at Jesus College, Oxford University. "Rawan has a very unique situation," Brittain said. "Her scholarship has been largely paid for by all the students in the college." Rawan is the first recipient of the Junior Members' Scholarship set up by Jesus students. In April the BBC News website carried a report of Rawan's achievement:  Gazan heads to Oxford University on unusual scholarship.

a child's-eye view

Rawan often writes her short stories from the child's point of view. At the launch she read "From Beneath", one of her three stories in the collection. After an Israeli attack the first person child narrator is trapped by rubble, alone and unable to move. A horrible realisation gradually dawns: "No one was coming to help me. There was no movement anywhere in the house. I wept even harder." Her other two stories in the anthology are "A Wall" - focusing on the Separation wall - and "Spared".

Jehan Alfarra is at Oxford Brookes University doing an MSc in Computing. In her story "Please Shoot to Kill" medical student Leila recalls how two years earlier her family's home was invaded by Israeli soldiers who beat up and shoot at her father. The home is then wrecked by an explosion. Her badly injured father needs to be sent to Cairo for a kidney operation in Cairo, and the family then faces an agonising dilemma.



In his introduction to Gaza Writes Back Refaat Alareer writes that almost half its stories began as class assignments in his Creative Writing or Fiction classes. "Many of the writers started as bloggers, and many had never written fiction before. Working closely with many young talents in Gaza has proven to me that all they need is proper encouragement, practical training, and close attention in order to blossom".


At the launch Refaat explained the thinking behind Gaza Writes Back, and the importance of  "going fiction".  When he was first approached by Helena Cobban rather more than a year ago, "I strongly suggested having a collection of short fiction rather than say a collection of articles, because in so many ways fiction is universal and 'going fiction' is going global, 'going fiction' is transcending the rigid facts, numbers and statistics we usually have in the news." Fiction addresses the human aspect, "giving a face to the victims here and there in Palestine, especially in Gaza during the Israeli attack called Operation Cast Lead." 

Refaat described preparing the anthology as "the most fascinating and productive year of my life. The peak was not only the book itself, but rather working with these amazing talents in Gaza." The book has 15 writers, but there are "many more writers out there in Gaza. there are many many more writers out there in Gaza. Future book projects with Helena Cobban or any other publisher, can bring these voices to the light.

"The writers have an excellent command of English, they have their belief in their right, they have the enthusiasm and the motivation, and most importantly understanding that writing back to Israel's long occupation and constant aggression is a moral obligation and a duty they are paying back to Palestine and to a bleeding yet resilient Gaza.

Looking to future developments for Gaza Writes Back, Refaat said: "We have been approached by people from as far as Japan, Turkey, Malaysia, to translate the book into their languages and we have been approached by people from South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia to go for a book tour, to talk about Palestine and about Gaza, and about the book, and to promote the Palestinian cause and the cause of peace."

He added: "I always say to my friends that sometimes a homeland becomes a story. We love the story because it is about our homeland, and we love our homeland even more because of the story. Therefore I do hope that Gaza Writes Back brings us Palestinians closer to each other and closer to a free Palestine. I also hope the book will be a bridge towards more understanding, a bridge towards dialogue, so that we all work together to end Israel's apartheid and live in peace."

'stories may be turned into movies or documentaries'

During the Q and A session with the audience, Refaat was asked why the stories were mostly written in English rather than being translated from Arabic. He explained the importance of reaching the English-reading audience beyond Gaza, but said he is sure that given the buzz around Gaza Writes Back, and the attention it is attracting, it will be translated into Arabic.

He also spoke of future possible book projects. "We are planning other books to include more talents, more writers from Gaza, in poetry, in children's stories - again mainly written in English. Maybe we are going to go for non-fiction in the future, and for longer stories - maybe a novella or a novel.

"Beyond that we're hoping to have some of these stories turned into movies or even documentaries."


Asked how the contributors and stories had been selected from the huge pool of talented young people, Refaat said choosing the stories had been "one of the most painful things I did in the past year and a half." After first announcing the book project to his students and friends on Facebook and Twitter he had received close to 100 stories. With the help of some of the contributors the pieces were read and the number successively reduced until the target of 23 stories was reached.

"It doesn't mean that these are the only good stories; there are other stories that we sadly couldn't include... Since we announced Gaza Writes Back I was told that other people got involved in publishing books of short stories from Gaza. Some of the stories that didn't make it to Gaza Writes Back made it to other books. And hopefully if we go for a Gaza Writes Back:Two we can include stories we had to leave out."

Refaat said the situation in Gaza is "the worst ever", and is aggravated by the terrible situation in Syria and in Egypt. There are "endless layers of pain" in Gaza. "We have political division, which is causing all sorts of crazy things to the people in Gaza and the West Bank; the occupation;, how our neighbouring countries are helping the occupation to tighten the siege. These things attempt to suffocate our determination to live, to go on in life, and you know they succeed - but there is always this ray of hope." People see light at the end of the tunnel, "but hopefully not like the light at the end of the tunnel in the story written by Nour al-Sousi 'Will I Ever Get Out?' because sometimes the light can be deceiving." (Al-Sousi's chilling story depicts a medical student trapped and alone in one of the tunnels from Gaza.)

Khalid Kishtainy | The Man Entire
Khalid Kishtainy is a controversial man of many parts, author of some 34 books, journalist, artist, politician and gripping story teller. People often see one part of him, but this rare event, presents him in his entirety as he will talk about his life, his work and his ideas. It will be all supported by his autobiography, Time in Iraq and England, published last month and available at the Centre, as well as during the joint exhibition of his paintings and the paintings of his daughter, Jasmine. His son Adam Kishtainy will be playing guitar music.

 خالد القشطيني بكامل شخصيته خالد القشطيني شخصية متعددة الادوار والجوانب والاهتمامات. فهو مؤلف لنحو 34 كتابا، وكاتب ساخر، وصحافي و فنان و مفكر سياسي و قاص متمكن. قد لايعرف الآخرون عنه سوى جانب واحد، و لكن في هذه الأمسية المتميزة، سيظهر القشطيني متكاملا حيث سيتكلم عن حياته و اعماله و افكاره. و ستتوج الأمسية بأستعراض كتابه الجديد المتضمن سيرته الذاتية والصادر مؤخرا تحت عنوان "زمن في العراق وانكلترا"والذي ستتوفر نسخ منه خلال الأمسية وطوال فترة المعرض الشخصي المشترك للوحاته الفنية و لوحات ابنته ياسمين. وسيقدم السيد آدم القشطيني-أبن الأستاذ خالد- عزفا على القيثار.
JOIN US!

6.30 pm Saturday 8 June
  
Iraqi Cultural Centre in London 
Threshold and Union House 
65-69 Shepherds Bush Green 
London W12 8TX

A review of Khalid's book of saucy London and Iraq stories: Arabian Tales: Baghdad on Thames (Quartet, 2012)

A review of Khalid's novel By the Rivers of Babylon (Quartet, 2008)

The chair of the judges of this year's £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing is the prize-winning Edinburgh-born Nigerian-Scottish poet, novelist and short story writer Jackie Kay MBE the prize organisers announced today. The Prize is awarded for a short story of 3,000 to 10,000 words by an African writer, published in English. Kay is joined on the panel by the distinguished South African-born novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo, Zimbabwean journalist Percy Zvomuya, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgetown Dr Nicole Rizzuto and Nigerian winner of the Caine Prize in 2001, Helon Habila.


This is the second time that a past winner of the Caine Prize will take part in the judging. Last year the judges included the Sudanese-Egyptian writer Leila Aboulela, who won the Caine in its inaugural year, 2000.

This year a record 140 qualifying stories have been submitted to the judges from 17 African countries. This is a big increase from last year, when there were 96 stories from 16 countries. In 2012 there were 122 stories from 14 countries, and in 2011 126 entries from 17 countries.


The judges are to meet in late April to decide on the five shortlisted stories, which will be announced shortly thereafter. Unlike some other prizes in the Booker-linked family of literary prizes, such as the Man Booker Prize and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), Caine non-winning shortlistees  receive no cash. But this year, to commemorate fifteen years of the Caine Prize, £500 will be awarded to each shortlisted writer.

The winning story will  be announced at a dinner at the Bodleian Library in Oxford on Monday 14 July. The five shortlisted stories, alongside the stories written at the annual Caine Prize workshop, will as always be published as an anthology by the publishers New Internationalist (UK), Jacana Media (South Africa), Cassava Republic (Nigeria), Kwani? (Kenya), Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana), FEMRITE (Uganda), Bookworld Publishers (Zambia) and amaBooks (Zimbabwe). This year’s Caine Prize workshop will be held in Zimbabwe. The 2013 workshop was for the first time hosted by Uganda.


Included in the 2013 anthology A Memory This Size and Other Stories is the story by last year’s Nigerian winner, Tope Folarin. Chair of judges Gus Casely-Hayford said at the time: "Tope Folarin's 'Miracle' is another superb Caine Prize winner - a delightful and beautifully paced narrative, that is exquisitely observed and utterly compelling..."

The Caine Prize for African Writing is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. An “African writer” is normally taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or whose parents are African.

 The Prize is principally supported by The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, Miles Morland, the Booker Prize Foundation, Sigrid Rausing and Eric Abraham, Weatherly International plc, China Africa Resources, Exotix and CSL Stockbrokers. Other funders include the DOEN Foundation, The Beit Trust, British Council, The Lennox and Wyfold Foundation, the Royal Over-Seas League and Kenya Airways.

 The African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee, are Patrons of The Caine Prize. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is President of the Council, Ben Okri OBE is Vice President, Jonathan Taylor CBE is the Chairman and Ellah Allfrey OBE is the Deputy Chairperson.

The previous winners are: Sudan’s Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003), Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011), Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012) and Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013).
Susannah Tarbush

launch reflected the spirit of a unique Palestinian musician and chronicler
report and photos by Susannah Tarbush

The launch of The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh 1904-1948  at the Mosaic Rooms in London had an atmosphere that suited perfectly the book's subject. There was music-making and readings from the book, Arab food, drink and laughter. But there were also bittersweet memories, and sadness over what the Palestinians have lost.

Wasif Jawhariyyeh was an extraordinary musician, singer and civil servant who was born in Jerusalem in 1897. His lawyer father, Jiryis Jawhariyyeh, was the mukhtar (communal leader) of the Eastern Orthodox community in the Old City, and was a member of Jerusalem's municipal council under the mayoralty of Salim al-Husseini and Faidy al-Alami.

Wasif lived in Jerusalem until 1948 when, like many other Palestinians, he was forced during the establishing of the state of Israel to leave his home. He died in exile in Beirut in 1972. He wrote detailed and copious memoirs covering 60 years, giving a unique and immensely rich account of artistic, social and political life in Jerusalem and wider Palestine, and then of his exile. 

The Storyteller of Jerusalem is an edited version of Wasif Jawhariyyeh's memoirs in English translation. It is published by Olive Branch Press, an imprint of Interlink Books of Northampton, Massachusetts. The 44 year time frame of the edited  memoirs span the Ottoman era and the British mandate period, culminating in the 1948 Nakba.

The original handwritten memoirs are archived as Books I, II and III at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) in Ramallah.  They were first published in Arabic by IPS in Beirut in 2003: Volume I covers Ottoman Jerusalem 1904-17, and Volume II British Mandate Jerusalem, 1918-48.

The live music at the Mosaic Rooms launch came thanks to Interlink's Palestinian founder, publisher and editor Michel Moushabeck who as well as being a publisher is a performer and promoter of Arab music. He currently plays tabla, riqq and daff in the Massachusetts-based  Layaali Arabic Music Ensemble of which he is a founding member. His recording credits include two albums  made by the group Anatolia, in which he played percussion: Lost Songs of Palestine and Folk Songs and Dance Music of Turkey and the Arab World.

The music at the launch was performed by an informal ensemble put together for the occasion: Moushabeck on percussion, singer Maria Lopez da Cunha, Kuwaiti violinist Ahmed Al Salhi, oud player Professor Rachel Beckles Willson, and qanun player Professor Martin Stokes. Moushabeck said he had met them all the previous night "and we had a short rehearsal yesterday evening at Rachel's house." 


The songs were interspersed with readings from The Storyteller of Jerusalem by the film, TV and radio actor Philip Arditti. The extracts from his memoirs read by Arditti, in a delightfully expressive and intimate manner, were riveting, entertaining and deeply informative.

The Storyteller of Jerusalem was edited by professor of sociology at Birzeit University Salim Tamari, and associate professor of history at Illinois State University, Issam Nassar, coeditors of Jerusalem Quarterly.  Each contributes an introduction to the book: Tamari's is on on "Wasif Jawhariyyeh's Jersalem" and Nassar's on "From Ottomans to Arabs".

The book was translated from Arabic to English by Nada Elzeer, who has a doctorate from Durham University and is now senior lector in Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

The book's foreword is by  Rachel Beckles Willson, professor of music at Royal Holloway, University of London, and director of the Humanities and Arts Centre there. She is the author of three books, most recently Orientalism and Musical Mission: Palestine and the West.



In her introductory comments at the launch Beckles Willson said that while researching for her book on Palestine, with its specific interest in the way in which Americans and Europeans introduced Western classical music to the region, "I realised that these memoirs, although I didn't read Arabic, were absolutely crucial to my work."

She looked for someone who could help her with understanding them and after some time found Nada Elzeer. "Initially I commissioned Nada to translate parts of the memoirs that were helpful for my own research and from them I learned such a new perspective on the region, something completely different from what had been available to me in English and German language sources which were almost all I had available at that time." The memoirs were "a complete treasure trove".

She subsequently met in Ramallah Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar, who had produced the Arabic published version of the memoirs. They told her that they had for some time wanted to produce an English version. She showed them the text that she had already had translated by Nada, and they wanted to use that as the basis for expansion. "That's what they then did, and we were very fortunate that Michel Moushabeck, the publisher of the book - who founded and directs Interlink and who edited this final volume - was able to take on the project."

Moushabeck told the audience that his 27-year-old publishing house specialises in literature in translation: "We do a lot of Arabic fiction in translation, we do a lot of world history, cultural guides as well as award-winning international cookbooks that really keep Interlink alive and well, and allow us to publish important works that we otherwise would never get published." (A recent Interlink cookery title is Sarah al-Hamad's impressive Sun Bread and Sticky Toffee: Date Desserts from Everywhere).

a witness to four regimes and five wars

Moushabeck, whose family is originally from Jerusalem, said The Storyteller of Jerusalem is very dear to his heart. "I knew Wasif as a young child and he left a very deep impression on me." The memoir is  "really the only book that I know of that truly captures the social life, and in particular Palestinian urban life in Jerusalem during this period of really enormously turbulent times. Wasif Jawhariyyeh witnessed four regimes - Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli - and five wars. He was truly a remarkable man."

Wasif's memoirs are "a collection of anecdotes, observations and writings  about the people, the social life,  the culture, festivities, the history of Jerusalem. Wasif was an accomplished oud player,
 a music lover, a historian, a storyteller, a churchgoer and a full-time partygoer, and he truly was a hard-core Jerusalemite. He loved Jerusalem, everyone in Jerusalem loved him, and he really was one of the funniest people I have ever met.

"What makes this volume remarkable is that it not only tells you about the first half of the twentieth century, but he quotes from his father's memoirs as well, written in the first half of the nineteenth century."

One important aspect of the memoir is that "he really undermines the notion of a sectarian, backward city of Jerusalem at that time. According to the British it was divided into four quarters - the Jewish quarter, the Christian quarter, the Muslim quarter and the Armenian quarter. And the British would have you believe there was no real interaction - that it was a very religiously conservative city and there was no interaction between the people - but that is really false.


"Jerusalem was made up of 26 different neighbourhoods and people moved, people mixed, people socialised, people interacted, and they went to each other's celebrations, and festivities. One big celebration that became a sort of national celebration was the Sabt al Noor on the Saturday before the Easter Sunday celebration: a lot of Muslims and Christians and Jews would party in the streets, and go to a procession, and end up drinking lots of wine and arak and getting drunk together. So it really gives you a totally different impression than what we hear in the news

Moushabeck stressed the important relationship between the Jawhariyyeh family and the Al-Husseini family, the most prominent Palestinian family at the time. When Hajj Salim al-Husseini became mayor of Jerusalem Wasif's father was the legal adviser to the Husseinis and took care of their estates of, the Husseini family.

Hajj Salim's son Hussein Hasham al-Husseini became mayor later on, and when Wasif's father passed away, he "kind of adopted Wasif as a son and Wasif became very loyal to him and his family. The family always looked after Wasif; they always made sure he had some kind of civil service job where it allowed him plenty of time to play music." 

Jawhariyyeh was a witness to the modernisation of Jerusalem and how this changed people's lives. "In the past they lived inside the walls, they couldn't manoeuvre a lot and then first gas came with the Ottomans, later on electricity was introduced. Electricity allowed people, Palestinians - Jews, Christians, Muslims - to get out of those quarters that were religious quarters and go outside the bounds of the city walls. They established neighbourhoods that tended to be based on class rather than religion. And then there was also intermingling between the different religions in the city of Jerusalem."

Wasif also witnessed the arrival of the automobile, radio, and phonograph. "They used to go down to the cafe and listen to music that was coming from Egypt, and they were introduced to a lot of musicians that they hadn't heard before. The phonograph was an amazing thing. Wasif's neighbours got a phonograph, Wasif heard about it and they would gather every night and listen to all this music.

"This introduced Wasif to a lot of music, and in particular the music of Salama Higazi who was a famous Egyptian muezzin at the time and also a great singer. When Hussein Hashm al Husseini became mayor of Jerusalem he brought Salama Higazi to Jerusalem, in summer 1908, and put up the largest tent in the city for the performance of a play as well as some music by this very famous Egyptian musician." Wasif cherished the memory of being taken to meet Salama Higazi by al-Husseini, and of kissing the great musician's hand.


Moushabeck recounted how, after Wasif became an exile in Beirut, "my father used to take me to his house on a regular basis. I must have been seven or eight years old. My father was so proud of me, he wanted to show Wasif the big Palestinian composer and musician that his son could also play music. He really embarrassed me when he asked me to play the harmonica for Wasif and he asked me to play what I had been practising."

To the amusement of the Mosaic Rooms audience, Moushabeck proceeded to take a harmonica out of  his pocket to play the tune he played to Wasif , the American song Oh Susanna.

"Wasif said bravo, bravo, but I want you to come back next week and play it faster. So I went home and every day I practised and I practised and came back a week later. Wasif said' bravo, bravo - now put that thing away. You come with me.' And he took me to the living room and he sat me there and he said I want you to close your eyes. He took his oud and started playing some amazing taqasim and I was mesmerised from that moment on.

"He knew that I was going to visit my grandfather in Jerusalem just before the 1967 war and he said 'when you go there I want you to listen when you walk in the streets, listen with your ears and your eyes'. And it's true: when I went for a walk with my grandfather down the streets of the Old City, music is all around you, you hear the muezzin's call to prayer juxtaposed against church bells ringing, you hear vendors in the streets yelling praises about cucumbers as small as ladies' fingers, or prickly pears that melted in your mouth, or you hear transistor radios blasting music from window sills, and you see young kids thumping their feet practising dubke on street corners.

"But the one person who had more effect on me musically than anybody else was the juice vendor. And the juice vendor goes from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and he plays intricate rhythmic patterns on cups and saucers to alert people that he is in the neighbourhood to come down and buy some juice from him. And I would sit on the street corners and my eye would be fixated on that juice vendor's hands playing intricate patterns on the cups and saucers and I went back to my grandfather's house and I picked up some cups and saucers and ended up breaking up half the china. And ended up with a spanking.  And that was the very last evening I saw my grandparents and the very last time I was in Jerusalem."

'like translating an Arab conversation in a room filled with smoke and humour'

The book's translator said: "For me the book has a major strength which is the fact that compared to other books or resources that you might find on the history of Palestine this one does not seem to have been written for publication. My impression is not that he sought to publish it or that he was writing to publish it. He wrote I think a few thousand pages and in the introduction he makes it clear that it is his realisation of how important and significant events he witnessed were that prompted him to write the book. And he dedicates it to his son Jiryis and hopes that he could use it to  know everything about the life of his father and family and the city of Jerusalem which he calls the home of the Jawhariyyeh family. And from that point you know he's not writing to make a political point and you can automatically trust him more.

"You can look forward to reading an account of events that he's writing or is telling as he would tell them to his son, not as he would tell them to an audience and that of course has its implication on the style. For me it is obviously a big privilege for me that I was able to translate this book and bring it to an English audience. But stylistically the challenge was immense: it's like translating an Arab conversation on a Friday evening in a room filled with smoke and humour and where you know where the conversation starts but you don't know what happens after that.

"But this is the kind of conversation that one tends to trust without questioning the intentions of the author, and on a thorny subject like Palestine and what happened there in the sensitive historic period this book talks about. I think its exceptional that we have a resource like that, hat was not written for an audience but more for the family's sake. And if you read the entire thing - maybe that's not clear in the English - there are a lot of private things and stories that you would really only tell to your son, you wouldn't want to share them with the wide audience about his private life.


The other strong point, Elzeer said, is that the memoir  "was written over a very long period  of time and that's also very exceptional as a source on Palestine because it gives you this very unique opportunity to observe how the narrative changed from early on in the Ottoman times, where  he was unsuspecting,  he was looking forward to the British winning the war. There are lots of accounts in the book where he's actually rejoicing after every Ottoman defeat in the war, and he's actually looking forward to it. And then you can see him looking a bit confused and then in the end of course the tone changes completely after 1948. This is quite unique, that you can actually see these feelings change. And if you consider him as a specimen of the Palestinians that can also represent how they all must have felt as the political situation developed."

Elzeer was struck "by the amount of good faith and goodwill that he shows when talking about events which nowadays Arabs could only be outraged when remembering. For example there is this chapter where  he talks about the day - 9 December 1917 - which is the day that the Brits entered Jerusalem. And he refers to that as 'this fortunate moment saw the end of Ottoman rule and of the tyranny and despotism that had prevailed,  particularly from 1914 to 1917.' There is  no way to tell if he edited what he wrote later or not, whether he wrote that when he was still unsuspecting and then edited that later. He does in the same paragraph say had he known then what he now knows, he wouldn't have rejoiced so much, he wouldn't have danced in the streets as he did.

"But again this is something I found very striking, there is this emotional confusion, he is able to talk very positively of what happened of the British taking over of Palestine. And then there will always be at the end of the same paragraph a bitter note as to oh, had we  known we would have thought differently. And he does that not only when he relates political events but also when he's talking about political figures.

"He's the man who's been everywhere, met everyone, and wrote it all down, and because he was working as a civil servant at the governorate at the time he had the chance to work under the most senior officials of the  British  mandate, and that includes Sir Ronald Storrs whom he had direct contact. And again, that is something unthinkable nowadays, that someone could talk about these figures so positively despite  how things turned out.

"It is striking for example that when talking about Ronald Storrs he acknowledges all his personal qualities but at some points he does write of his having been instrumental in the fulfilment of the Zionist dream. But that doesn't stop him talking about him almost fondly when relating personal events involving the two of them and it doesn't stop him from recognising his qualities as a person. In fact he does say that Storrs has taken wonderful stances towards Arabs on many occasions. And that's another attitude that I would find unthinkable today, you just cannot find an Arab who would talk about an occupying power with the same honesty that Wasif does, bearing everything in mind and representing things as they are. And again, in reporting on British policy in general he is able to do it, he doesn't just do it for individuals because he knew them personally or got to be their friends.

She said that one of the reasons the memoir is so emotionally charged is that "Wasif's good faith and goodwill makes you really feel sorry for these people who did not suspect any of this and you will read the stories of villages when  he was a child and went on trips to many Palestinian villages with his father - but if you look these villages up now you will find they are all gone, they were razed at some point or another. It's even more difficult to read about that because Wasif doesn't mention it, he just talks with all goodwill about how things were.

"If you read particularly the Ottoman section another striking thing is how he reports about social life at the time and how they used to party at the homes of Jewish friends. And there's this long section where the word Jewish is only ever mentioned as a pure detail with no comment made about it, just saying Jewish like it might say someone else is Muslim. And you can see that changing, particularly in relation to music, as the book progresses. He starts becoming more suspecting when it comes to music, how he was happy to hear them singing in Arabic and not being able to pronouunce it, and being very amused by  it. And then later on things start changing and that's also a very sad thing when you think this was 60, 70 years ago and it just feels it was much longer period of thing than it actually is. That's the saddest thing about this book."

Moroccan writers Youssef Fadel and Abdelrahim Lahbibi, Iraqi novelists Inaam Kachachi and Ahmed Saadawi, Syrian author Khaled Khalifa, and Egyptian Ahmed Mourad were today announced as the six authors shortlisted for the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF, often known as the Arabic Booker).

IPAF is worth a total of $60,000 to the winner - the $50,000 prize itself, plus the $10,000 that goes to each of the six shortlistees. In addition, IPAF guarantees English translation for the winner.

Youssef Fadel is shortlisted for A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me (Dar al-Adab), Abdelrahim Lahbibi for The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya (Africa East), Inaam Kachachi for Tashari (Dar al-Jadid), Ahmed Saadawi for Frankenstein in Baghdad (Al-Jamal), Khaled Khalifa for No Knives in this City’s Kitchens (Dar al-Ain) and Ahmed Mourad for The Blue Elephant (Dar al-Shorouq). Khalifa's No Knives in this City's Kitchenswon the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in December.

This year's stories "are wide-ranging in both subject matter and style," a statement from IPAF says. "They include a prison novel from Morocco; a story about one family’s dispersal around the globe, from 1950s Iraq to the modern day; a police hunt for an Iraqi Frankenstein terrorising Baghdad; one man’s search for knowledge as he travels around North Africa and the Middle East; the grim reality of one family’s struggle to survive in present day Aleppo, and a psychological thriller played out in a psychiatric hospital in Cairo."

The shortlist was chosen from a longlist of 16, announced in January. The longlist included only two women: in addition to Inaam Kachachi there was Saudi writer Badryah El-Bishr (longlisted for Love Stories on al-Asha Street).


Some of the best-known Arab novelists failed to make the jump from longlist to shortlist; they include  Egyptian Ibrahim Abdelmeguid (longlisted for Clouds Over Alexandria), Sudanese Amir Tag Elsir (366), Algerian Waciny Laredj (Ashes of the East: The Wolf who Grew Up in the Wilderness) and Jordanian-Palestinian Ibrahim Nasrallah (The Edge of the Abyss).

There will be disappointment in Kuwait that after the winning of last year's Prize by the Kuwaiti writer Saud Alsanousi for The Bamboo Stalk - the first time a Kuwaiti novelist had been longlisted, let alone won - the pioneering Kuwaiti novelist Fahd Ismail - 74 this year - did not make the shortlist with his longlisted novel  Phoenix and the Faithful Friend. 

There were 156 entries for the Prize from 18 countries; all the entrants were published within the last 12 months. The IPAF 2014 winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 29 April 2014, on the eve of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The Prize was launched in Abu Dhabi in April 2007, and is supported by the Booker Prize Foundation in London and funded by the TCA (Tourism and Culture Authority) Abu Dhabi.


The shortlist, and the identities of the IPAF 2014 judges, were disclosed  at a press conference held today at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation in Amman, Jordan. The chair of the judges, Saudi academic and critic Saad A. Albazei, said: ‘This year’s longlist was full of excellent books – a reflection of the overall quality of Arabic fiction published this year – so it was a real challenge to whittle the list down to just six. The shortlisted novels are varied in their narrative styles and language: from discovering virtual reality to the mingling of fantasy and reality, they also include classical language and multiple narrative voices and demonstrate the Arabic novel's ability to flower despite the harsh realities of daily life.’


Professor Yasir Suleiman, Chair of the IPAF Board of Trustees, comments: "This year's shortlist includes a rich selection of outstanding novels, in which subject, narrative style and atmosphere are dominated by current fragmented reality and human suffering. There are new voices in the list who are reaching this stage in the prize for the first time and more experienced ones who have been there before. Despite their differences, they all have in common humanitarian concerns and masterful storytelling, gripping and enthralling the reader."

Albazei is joined on the judging panel by Libyan journalist, novelist and playwright Ahmed Alfaitouri; Moroccan academic, critic and novelist Zhor Gourram; Iraqi academic and critic Abdullah Ibrahim, and Turkish academic Mehmet Hakki Suçin who specialises in the teaching of the Arabic language and the translation of Arabic literature into Turkish.

The shortlist includes two shortlistees from earlier years: Inaam Kachachi (The American Granddaughter, 2009) and Khaled Khalifa (In Praise of Hatred, 2008).  Shortlistee Ahmed Saadawi has a previous connection to IPAF, through his participation in the 2012 IPAF Nadwa under the tutelage of fellow-shortlistee Inaam Kachachi, and Sudanese Amir Tag Elsir (the latter was shortlisted in 2011 for The Grub Hunter). The Nadwa, held in Abu Dhabi annually since November 2009, is aimed at emerging Arab writers. 

The IPAF 2014 shortlist press release issued by PR consultancy Four Colman Getty includes the following biographies and novel synopses:

Youssef Fadel is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter, born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1949. During the so-called ‘Years of Lead’ in Morocco, he was imprisoned in the notorious Moulay al-Sheriff prison (1974-75). He has published a number of plays and novels. His first play, The Barber in the Poor District, was made into a film directed by Mohamed al-Rakab in 1982. His novel Hashish (2000) won the Grand Atlas Prize, organised by the Embassy of France in Morocco, in 2001. A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me (2013) is his ninth novel.

A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me - Aziz is a pilot at the air force base who loves flying and forgets his cares when he is up in the air. It is flying that he thinks of on his wedding night, rather his 16 year-old bride, Zina, waiting in the adjoining room. The following morning he leaves his house at the crack of dawn, not to return for 18 years. His wife, Zina, looks for him everywhere - in prisons, offices, cities and forests – asking questions and following false leads, only to be disappointed. However, one day – in the bar where she and her sister Khatima work – a stranger presses a scrap of paper into her pocket. It takes her on one last journey in search of her husband: to the Kasbah of al-Glaoui in southern Morocco, where Aziz crouches in a prison cell, having lost hope of ever being found. A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me is a fictional testament to the terrible period of Moroccan history known as 'the years of cinders and lead'.

Inaam Kachachi was born in Baghdad in 1952, and studied journalism at Baghdad University. She worked in the Iraqi media before moving to Paris to complete a PhD at The Sorbonne. She is currently the Paris correspondent for the London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat and Kol Al-Usra magazine in Sharjah, UAE. Kachachi has published a biography in Arabic, Lorna, about the British journalist Lorna Hales, who was married to the famous pioneering Iraqi sculptor Jawad Salim, and a book in French about Iraqi women's literature produced in times of war and hardship. She produced and directed a documentary about Naziha Al-Dulaimi, the first woman to become government minister in an Arab country, in 1959. Her first novel, Heart Springs, was published in 2005 and her second novel, The American Granddaughter (2008), was shortlisted for IPAF in 2009 and has subsequently been translated into English, French and Chinese.

Tashari deals with the tragedy of Iraqi displacement of the past few decades, through the life story of a female doctor working in the countryside in southern Iraq in the 1950s. The narrative also follows her three children, who now live in three different continents, particularly her eldest daughter who has also become a doctor and works in a remote region of Canada. The title of the novel, Tashari, is an Iraqi word referring to a shot from a hunting rifle which is scattered in several directions. Iraqis use it as a symbol of loss and being dispersed across the globe. As a way of combating the dispersal of his own family, one of the characters, Alexander, constructs a virtual graveyard online, where he buries the family dead and allots to each person scattered across the globe his/her own personal plot.
Khaled Khalifa was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1964 and holds a BA in Law from Aleppo University. He has written many successful screenplays for TV series, as well as for the cinema. He is also a regular contributor to a number of Arabic newspapers. His third novel, In Praise of Hatred (2006), was shortlisted for IPAF in 2008, and longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013. It has been translated into several languages.

No Knives in this City's Kitchens is a profound exploration of the mechanics of fear and disintegration over half a century. Through the story of one Syrian family, it depicts a society living under tyranny with stifled aspirations. The family realise that all their dreams have died and turned into rubble, just as the corpse of their mother has become waste material they must dispose of in order to continue living. Written with shocking perception and exquisite language, from the very beginning this novel makes its readers ask fundamental questions and shows how regimes can destroy Arab societies, plundering lives and wrecking dreams. Khaled Khalifa writes about everything which is taboo in Arab life, with a particular focus on Syria. No Knives in this City's Kitchens is a novel about grief, fear and the death of humanity.


Abdelrahim Lahbibi is a Moroccan novelist, born in Safi, Morocco in 1950. He left Safi for Fez in 1967, where he obtained a BA in Arabic Language from the College of Arts and Human Sciences in 1970. He worked as a teacher of Arabic language and literature in secondary education from 1970-1982 and as a school inspector and curriculum co-ordinator from 1984 onwards. He has published three novels: Bread, Hashsish and Fish (2008), The Best of Luck (2010) and The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya (2013).

The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya A researcher stumbles across a manuscript and attempts to edit it, to make it into a doctoral thesis. Entitled The Journeys of 'Abdi, the manuscript is an account of one man’s journeys from Morocco to the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia in search of knowledge, written in the manner of Moroccan intellectuals such as Ibn Khaldun. ’Abdi’s journey turns into an examination of Arabic and Muslim society, with ’Abdi emphasising the need for Arabs to learn from Europe in order to achieve social progress. Split into two, The Journeys of 'Abdi, known as Son of Hamriya follows both ’Abdi’s search for knowledge as well as the narrator’s attempts to edit his manuscript.

Ahmed Mourad was born in Cairo in 1978. He studied cinematography at the Higher Institute for Cinema in Cairo, graduating in 2001. His graduation films The Wanderers, Three Papers, and On the Seventh Day won prizes for short film at festivals in the UK, France and Ukraine. His first novel, Vertigo, appeared in 2007, before being translated into English, Italian and French and made into a television series broadcast in Ramadan 2012. In 2010, Mourad published his second novel Diamond Dust, which was translated into Italian, followed by The Blue Elephant, in October 2012.


The Blue Elephant After five years of self-imposed isolation, Doctor Yahya returns to work at the Abbasiya Psychiatric Hospital in Cairo, where there is a surprise in store for him. In ‘West 8’, the department in charge of determining the mental health of patients who have committed crimes, he meets an old friend who reminds him of a past he is desperately trying to forget. Suddenly finding his friend's fate in his hands, Yahya's life is turned upside down, with one shocking turn of events following another. What begins as an attempt to find out the true mental condition of his friend becomes an enthralling journey to discover himself, or what is left of him.



Ahmed Saadawi is an Iraqi novelist, poet and screenwriter, born in 1973 in Baghdad, where he works as a documentary film maker. He is the author of a volume of poetry, Festival of Bad Songs (2000), and three novels, The Beautiful Country (2004), He Dreams or Plays or Dies (2008) and Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013). He has won several prizes and in 2010 was selected for the Beirut39 Festival, as one of the 39 best Arab authors below the age of 40. He took part in the annual IPAF ‘Nadwa’, or literary workshop for promising young writers, in 2012.

The final programme of the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival 2014, to be held in Asia House, London, from 6th - 21st May 2014, was announced in a press release today. The theme of this year's festival is Changing Values Across Asia.


Literary superstar (as the programme describes him) Hanif Kureishi launches the Festival on 6 May with a discussion on his new novel, The Last Word.

The Festival also features prize winning novelists Kamila Shamsie, Tash Aw and Romesh Gunesekera, award-winning BBC journalist John Sweeney, and debates on North Korea, Tiananmen 25 years on and changing sexual mores across Asia. Other highlights include an evening of British Asian humour, Vietnamese cookery at lunchtime and interactive events for families.

Now in its eighth year and with a new title sponsor, the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival is the only UK festival dedicated to pan-Asian writing.  It presents a mix of literary talks, performance, topical debate, humour, cookery, tai chi and interactive family events from renowned authors, performers and thinkers- home-grown and from across Asia. 

With a range of events covering more than 17 countries, the Festival this year includes authors writing about China, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, India, as well as Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Nepal, the Middle East, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Palestine, Sri Lanka and Britain.

Warming up with three pre-festival events in April, Asia House will feature a session on China's changing values with Booker Prize long-listed author Tash Aw and Yiyun Li, author of Kinder than Solitude; Man Asia Prize winner Kyung-sook Shin, who joins fellow South Korean novelist Krys Lee and British Pakistani Qaisra Shahraz to debate the effect of political separations on their countries and their writing, at an event in partnership with the British Council/London Book Fair Korea Market Focus and Why do Indians Vote?, a wide-ranging discussion on the world's largest democracy and its upcoming election.

Continuing the 'Changing Values' theme into the main festival in May, acclaimed journalists and China experts Jonathan Mirsky, Michael Bristow and Jonathan Fenby explore China 25 years after Tiananmen; foreign correspondent Peter Popham, examines Burma two years after its milestone election, while Shereen el Feki (Sex and the Citadel) and Sally Howard (The Kama Sutra Diaries) take a serious but entertaining look at changing sexual mores in the Middle East, India and Pakistan.


On the fiction side, award-winning Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie introduces her hotly anticipated novel of friendship, injustice and love, A God in Every Stone. The best of Asian literature is further celebrated as new works by acclaimed Sri Lankan novelist Romesh Gunesekera, one of Granta's Best of Young British novelists Xiaolu Guo and Pakistani-born Roopa Farooki are previewed in a special showcase event ahead of publication. A new series, Extra Words will introduce debut authors from Pakistan, Nepal and Thailand.

Award-winning BBC reporter John Sweeney (North Korea Undercover) joins author of North Korea: State of Paranoia, Paul French to analyse the threat posed by that country, while historian John Keay introduces the first comprehensive history of South Asia as a whole with his new book Midnight's Descendants. Digital freedom in East Asia will be analysed with Thai blogger Giles Ji Ungpakorn and Anja Kovacs from the Internet Democracy Project in Delhi and others, in an event in partnership with English PEN.

But not all events will focus on 'Changing Asian Values': some will be just for fun. Look out for lunchtime cookery with The Vietnamese Market Cookbook authors and Tai chi, Origami, Ninja Meerkats and poetry workshops for children. Joining forces with Penned in the Margins at Rich Mix in East London, the festival programme includes The Shroud, a two-man, miniature epic about loss, time and the things that connect us, with Siddhartha Boseand Avaes Mohammed. British Asian humour will be hotly debated by a panel including journalist Sathnam Sanghera, BBC head of comedy Saurabh Kakkar, comedian Shazia Mirza and writer producer of hit TV shows Goodness Gracious Me, The Kumars at Number 42, The Office and Citizen Khan, Anil Gupta. The author of Packing Up: Further Adventures of a Trailing Spouse, Brigid Keenan takes us on a wildly funny tour through her life in Kazakstan, Azerbaijan and Palestine.

In addition to events at Asia House, the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival this year extends its youth engagement programmes with two-day writing workshops and author visits in 6 London area schools and 6 others across Newham, Manchester, Leicester and Birmingham aiming to reach 300+ students. There is a student writing competition with the top five students winning a day of mentoring with writing, publishing and communications professionals.

On the seventh anniversary of the car bomb that killed more than 60 people, wounded over 100 and destroyed around 50 bookshops in Baghdad's famous Al-Mutanabbi Street, people crowded into the meeting room of the Arab British Centre in central London yesterday to commemorate the 5 March 2007 attack.

The attack on Al-Mutanabbi Street was seen as an onslaught on the heart and soul of Baghdad’s cultural and intellectual community. The winding street - named after the great 10th century classical Arab poet Abu at-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi - is filled with bookshops and outdoor stalls and has for centuries been a meeting place for poets, political dissidents and literary aficionados.


The audience heard from a panel of four London-based publishers and booksellers - Brian Whitaker, Margaret Obank, Barbara Schwepcke and Ghassan Fergiani - who discussed the wider relevance and symbolism of Al-Mutanabbi Street, and issues of freedom of expression and safeguarding literary heritage.

Two young actors, Syrian Ammar Haj Ahmad and Iraqi Dina Mousawi, give beautiful readings, in the Arabic original and in English translation respectively, of poems by the great Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef. The poems appear in the anthology Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi and published by PM Press. The poems included "Night in Hamadan", "April Stork" and "Solos on the Oud", all translated by the Libyan poet, scholar and translator Khaled Mattawa. Copies of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here were on sale at the event, and audience members were also able to pick up free copies of Banipal 37, which showcases Iraqi authors. Images of Al-Mutanabbi Street were projected onto the wall behind the panel throughout the event.


The event, Seven Years On: Preserving Literary Heritage, was jointly hosted by Banipal Magazine and the Arab British Centre. It was one of tens of events held around the world on 5 March this year and in previous years following San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil's founding of the coalition Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, to speak out against the destruction of books and writing and people that day. The afternoon event at the Arab British Centre was followed by an Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here evening of poetry, film, drama and photography at UCL Archaeology Lecture Theatre, presented by Iraqi playwright, writer and scientist Hassan Abdulrazzak and Dr Alan Ingram.

Beau Beausoleil had expressed the importance of commemorating the anniversary of the bombing, saying he wanted to "dedicate the readings this year to the tens of thousands of 'disappeared' in Iraq". In this video he speaks compellingly about  Al-Mutanabbi Street and why as a poet and bookseller he felt the need to do something to respond to the attack through founding Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here.


The audience included several Iraqis who spoke movingly on their memories of, and post-attack visits to, Al-Mutanabbi Street. Another contributor from the floor was soldier turned writer Adnan Sarwar, who was serving in the British Army in Basra at the time of the Al-Mutanabbi Street attack. His essay British Muslim Soldier won the Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize.

House of Lords Tuesday 8 April 2014

 Muslim Brotherhood Question 3.01 pm 
Asked by Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Liberal Democrat)

"To ask Her Majesty’s Government on what basis they have established an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in the United Kingdom." 

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Conservative):
My Lords, the Prime Minister’s decision to commission a review was taken on the grounds of national interest against a backdrop of substantial recent change, particularly in the Middle East and north Africa. The review will make sure that we have a thorough understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood, its impact and influence on our national security and interests, and on stability and prosperity in the Middle East.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My noble friend will be aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is a pan-Islamic organisation which takes very different forms in different countries. If the Government believe that the Brotherhood might be involved in violent extremism, why do they not use existing counterterrorism laws to prosecute it in the courts?


If, on the other hand, this inquiry is being driven at the behest of Saudi Arabia to discredit the Brotherhood, I respectfully suggest to my noble friend that it is the United Kingdom’s Government and its foreign policy which risk being discredited, by portraying the Brotherhood in the eyes of its many Muslim supporters around the world as victims of a politically motivated Government acting at the behest of an authoritarian foreign power: Saudi Arabia. Can the Minister tell the House whether the results of the inquiry will be made public?

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: My Lords, my Answer made it quite clear that this is about the UK’s national interest and the UK Government forming their own view. The review will make sure that we have a thorough understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood, its impact and influence on our national security and other national interests, and on stability and prosperity in the Middle East. We are not talking about the view of another Government; we are talking about this Government. The review will consult widely with experts, regional Governments, the EU and US partners. The UK Government will make up their own mind.



Lord Wright of Richmond (Crossbencher): My Lords, if press reports are correct, this review is being headed by Her Britannic Majesty’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Does this not put Sir John Jenkins in an extremely invidious position, given that the Government to whom he is accredited take every possible step, as the noble Baroness has said, to discredit and to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood?

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I cannot agree with the noble Lord, although he speaks with a great deal of authority. He will know that Sir John Jenkins has been asked to lead the review because he is one of our most senior diplomats, with extensive knowledge of the Arab world, and his role is to serve Her Majesty’s Government. He was not chosen because of his current role as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He is not working alone, and will draw on independent advice from other places.

Baroness Smith of Basildon (Labour): My Lords, the Minister referred to a review, but the Prime Minister used the words “an investigation” or “an inquiry”, and there may be some difference. It would be helpful if we could have some information on that. Has he taken the opportunity to talk about this to the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who always impresses your Lordships’ House with her knowledge of such issues?


A report in the Financial Times says that a senior government figure reported on “tensions” between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Prime Minister’s Office on this, saying: “This cuts against what the FCO has already been doing in this area, both domestically and in the Middle East. It risks turning supporters of a moderate, non-violent organisation that campaigns for democracy into radicals”. Is there a tension at the heart of the Government, and is this a review or an investigation?

 Lord Taylor of Holbeach: Not at all, my Lords. My noble friend and I are at one on the issue.

Lord Elton (Conservative): My Lords, can my noble friend tell me and the House whether the ambassador will go on being an ambassador while he is also leading the inquiry, and if so, is there not a conflict of interest?

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I am sure that ways will be found whereby his duties as ambassador can be delegated where necessary. However, he has been appointed to that role as an ambassador, and will continue to undertake that role. I see no conflict of interest. As the noble Lord, Lord Wright, recognised, the diplomatic skills that Sir John Jenkins has are essential for a proper understanding of the situation.

Lord West of Spithead (Lab): My Lords, can the Minister tell us how many other reviews or investigations have been conducted in this manner into groups we have been concerned about? I cannot remember that we undertook any reviews or investigations in this manner of the groups that we were worried about during the three years that I was a Minister.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: That was a decision for the previous Government. This Government have made up their own mind that they want to know more about the Muslim Brotherhood and its influence on politics and groups in this country. I hope that noble Lords will understand that this is a British review conducted by the British Government. I was asked earlier and did not give an answer—this is obviously an internal review for the Government themselves. However, it is expected that Sir John Jenkins and the group will want to make some of their findings public. Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords—

Lord Dykes (LD): As this is manifestly a sordid plot from Saudi Arabia, would it not be more interesting if HMG had conversations with the Saudi Government about allowing women to drive cars in that country?

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: That question is not worthy of my noble friend. The noble Lord, Lord Wright, was trying to get in, as I had named him.

Lord Wright of Richmond: With the permission of the House I wish to make a very brief remark. As a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, I would find it extremely difficult if anyone were to ask me to head this review.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: In answer to that, I can say only that I am very pleased that Sir John Jenkins has not found it so. I am sure that he will do an excellent job in the national interest.

[transcript from Hansard] 

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing wins rights to 2013 ‘Arab Booker’ winner

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) has reached a deal to publish the English translation of Kuwaiti author Saud Alsanousi's novel Saq al-Bamboo -  The Bamboo Stalk - which won the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF, known informally as the ‘Arab Booker’ award.) Alsanousi is the first, and so far only, Kuwaiti novelist to have won this prestigious prize, worth a total of $60,000 to the winner.

The Arabic original of the novel was published by Arab Scientific Publishers of Lebanon. It is being translated by the acclaimed British translator of Arabic literature Jonathan Wright. In January Wright was declared  joint winner of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation 2013, for his translation of Egyptian writer Youssef Ziedan's 2009 IPAF-winning Azazeel.

BQFP Head of English Publishing Thalia Suzuma - who recently joined the Doha-based publisher from HarperCollins UK - won the English language rights to the daring novel from the London-based Susijn Agency. The translation will be published in 2015. Susijn's website has a page dedicated to  information on the novel and its author. The translation is due to be delivered by the end of July.

The Bamboo Stalk takes an unflinching look at the phenomenon of foreign workers in Arab countries and deals with the problems of identity, race and religion through the life of a young man of dual Kuwaiti-Filipino heritage returning home to Kuwait. The Arab Times described the novel as ‘a force to be reckoned with', which 'will take the Arab world and the whole world by storm.’



Thalia Suzuma says: ‘The Bamboo Stalk is a wonderful novel – an effortless, page-turning read; emotionally compelling and powerful. The themes of displacement and mixed roots are universal and handled with an extraordinary lightness of touch.

"BQFP is delighted to be publishing this book for an English-reading audience around the world, and we are so pleased to have award-winning translator Jonathan Wright on board.’

Saud Alsanousi, born in 1981, is a Kuwaiti novelist and journalist. His work has appeared in a number of Kuwaiti publications, including Al-Watan and Al-Arabi newspapers. He currently writes for Al-Qabas newspaper.

BQFP is a partnership of Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, which was  established in October 2008 and is headquartered in the Qatari capital Doha. BQFP has four main aims: to publish books of excellence and originality in English and Arabic; to promote the love of reading and writing and help establish a vibrant literary culture in Qatar and the Middle East; to cultivate new literary talent, especially in Arabic, through events and creative writing workshops; and to achieve the transfer of knowledge and publishing related skills into Qatar. It achieves the last of these aims through regular internships, secondments and training courses in key areas of publishing, and mentoring of aspiring Qatari publishers.
Susannah Tarbush

Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka announces Caine shortlist 
“Compelling, lyrical, thought-provoking and engaging." This is how the chair of the judges of the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing Jackie Kay MBE summed up this year's five-story shortlist, which was unveiled yesterday . The shortlisted authors are Billy Kahora and Okwiri Oduor (both of Kenya); Diane Awerbuck (South Africa); Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe) and Efemia Chela (Ghana-Zambia). Kahora was previously shortlisted for the Prize in 2012. As so often in previous years, no authors from North Africa feature on the shortlist.

The shortlist was announced by Nobel Prize winner and Caine Prize Patron Professor Wole Soyinka, as part of the opening ceremonies for the UNESCO World Book Capital 2014 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The other two living African winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature - Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee - are also patrons of the Prize.

"From a daughter's unusual way of grieving for her father, to a memorable swim with a grandmother, a young boy's fascination with a gorilla's conversation, a dramatic faux family meeting, to a woman who is forced to sell her eggs, the subjects are as diverse as they are entertaining,” said Jackie Kay, the award-winning Nigerian-Scottish poet and author.