IPAF's 16-novel longlist is packed with heavweights - but includes only two women
by
Susannah Tarbush
covers of the IPAF 2014 longlist
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.
last year's winner, Saud Alsanousi of Kuwait
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
Inaam Kachachi
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.
Khaled Khalifa
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.
Ahmed Mourad
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, Da
ys 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.
Badryah El-Bishr
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.
Waciny Laredj
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.
Ibrahim Nasrallah
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.
Ahmed Saadawi
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.
