Category Archives: Egypt Literature

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Images from the Cairo Book Fair 2015

The Cairo Book Fair happened in the Egyptian capital on 28th January – 12th February. Formerly one of the biggest fairs on the continent, it wasn’t spared by the revolution that spread across North Africa and toppled leaders in 2011. Our correspondent in Cairo Lena Naassana gives us a photo gallery of the fair that is slowly getting back to its feet.

 

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North Africans pepper International Prize for Arabic Fiction longlist

Hammour Ziada

The International prize for Arabic fiction was set up in 2007 to address limited international availability of Arabic literature. The prize is one of the richest in writing in this part of the world as US$50,000 goes to the winner of the prize and shortlisted writers go home with US$10,000. The winner also gets translated into English so that English speakers like myself get to read them.

The organisers of the prize announced the longlist for the 2015 prize which had 16 books with 12 different countries listed. In that list of longlistees are Africans the first of which this blogger noted was Sudan’s Hammour Ziada who won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature 2014. There other writers include Muna al-Sheemi and Ashraf al-Khamaisi from Egypt, Shukri al-Mabkhout from Tunisia and Ahmed al-Madeeni and Mohammed Berrada from Morocco

The shortlist, where folks know that they will at least be going home with US$10,000 will be made in Casablanca, Morocco on Friday 13 February and the big winner will be announced in Abu Dhabi on 6 May. The full longlist includes;

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Sudan’s Hammour Ziada gets Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature 2014

Hammour Ziada

Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature and is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature. He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career.

Since 1996 the American University in Cairo (AUC) Press the Nobel laureates publisher has presented the annual Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. This award which supports contemporary Arabic literature in translation consists of a silver medal and a cash prize and is presented annually on 11 December, the birthday of Naguib Mahfouz. It is a work written in Arabic that is then translated and published throughout the English-speaking world by AUC Press.

This years award was announced last Thursday as it tradition and the winner is 37-year-old Sudanese writer Hammour Ziada for his novel Shawq al-darwish (The Longing of the Dervish).

The Longing Of The Derwish

The Longing of the Dervish is the tale of a Sudanese slave, Bekhit Mandil, and his beloved, Theodora, a Greek Alexandrian, set against the background of brutal power struggles from the time of the Mahdi revolution to the fall of Khartoum. The love story is the driving force of Ziada’s historical narrative in which he explores sobering themes such as revenge, slavery, and imprisonment, but also betrayal, religious hypocrisy, and racism.

Ziada on winning the award stated that; “It is a great honor for me to win the Mahfouz Medal because I am the first Sudanese to get it.”

His book will now be translated and published in an English-language edition by the AUC Press in Cairo, New York, and London.

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Morland Writing Scholars 2014 announced

Simone Haysom

The Miles Morland Foundation (MMF) has announced the winners of the 2014 Morland Writing Scholarships. The winners each receive a grant of ₤18,000 to allow them to take a year to write a book. The awards are based on submissions which include a book proposal and an excerpt of published writing.

While usually the MMF awards three scholarships every year to African writers selected by a panel of African judges this year they announced four scholars. The scholars and their suggested projects are;

  1. Simone Haysom (South Africa) - she published many short pieces of fiction and journalism. This will be her first book. Set in South Africa, it will be a work of non-fiction examining a possible miscarriage of justice following the death by “necklacing” of a suspected thief.
  2. Ahmed Khalifa (Egypt) – the 21 year old will write a novel, his first book, about three generations of Egyptians from the 1952 Revolution to the Arab Spring.
  3. Ndinda Kioko (Kenya) – is a writer and film-maker whose work has appeared in several literary magazines. Her novel will tell the story of a daughter’s quest to conjure up memories of her dead mother. She was also one the Africa 39 list and is one of the Jalada crew.
  4. Yewande Omotoso (Nigeria-Barbados) – Another Africa 39er, Omotoso published Bomboy, a widely acclaimed first novel in 2011. Her Scholarship book, like Ndinda’s, is a story of loss and a mother’s attempt to come to terms with the death of her daughter.

The two Reserve Scholars are:

  • Fiona Andia Kisia (Kenya) – I have seen her work in earlier editions of Kwani? the literary journal. Brilliant.
  • Elnathan John (Nigeria) – One of the best writers of satire I have ever read. Check out his blog here.

The Judges, as last year, were Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Nadifa Mohamed the award-winning Somali novelist and Olufemi Terry from Sierra Leone, past winner of the Caine Prize.

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, chair of the judging panel, said: “It was encouraging to see the high standard and range of entries this year. My fellow judges and I considered the potential impact of the proposed books, along with the quality of the pieces of published work. We were looking for writers with original stories to tell and for those with distinct styles and a grasp of the chosen form. All four of the Scholars selected show incredible promise.”

Miles Morland, who sat in with Michela Wrong, the MMF’s Literary Director, as an observer at the judging said: “I was blown away by the quality of this year’s entries. Everyone in Africa seems to have a story to tell. Our four new Scholars are potentially world-class writers.”