{"id":1015,"date":"2010-11-20T09:48:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T05:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2010-11-26T14:35:36","modified_gmt":"2010-11-26T10:35:36","slug":"nope-a-woman-%e2%80%98won%e2%80%99t-win-the-arabic-booker%e2%80%99-in-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/middle-east-art\/middle-east-literature\/nope-a-woman-%e2%80%98won%e2%80%99t-win-the-arabic-booker%e2%80%99-in-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"No, a Woman \u2018Won\u2019t Win the Arabic Booker\u2019 in 201"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday, Youm 7<\/em> quoted Amina Zaydan<\/a>\u2014who has won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz medal for her novel Red Wine<\/em>–<\/a>\u2013as saying you shouldn\u2019t put your money on a female \u201cArabic Booker\u201d winner this year.<\/p>\n

\n

Seven of the 16 writers on this year\u2019s longlist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (or \u201cArabic Booker\u201d) are women, a fact that has been both ballyhooed<\/a> and poo-pooed<\/a> by observers. Among the longlisted women are the highly regarded Miral al-Tahawy, for her acclaimed Brooklyn Heights<\/em><\/a>; Renee Hayek, who was previously on the 2009 IPAF longlist for her Prayer for the Family<\/em> and is now longlisted for A Short Life;<\/em> and prominent Saudi author Raja Alem, for her The Doves\u2019 Necklace<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This follows several years where women had a much smaller space on the list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zaydan tells Youm 7<\/em> that the near-equality of the longlist is a good step. But Zaydan added that women\u2019s writing\u2014while strong\u2014is still not taken seriously, and is treated as ancillary to men\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n

Writer\/translator Fatima Naaot also told the paper she didn\u2019t see literary prize mechanisms as free and fair. But Naaot instead blamed the lack of prizes for women, to a greater extent, on women who are under the influence of male-dominated society.<\/p>\n

As to myself, I do think that we\u2019re likely to see two women\u2019s names on the six-book shortlist this year: Why not? I also think it\u2019s difficult to talk about an Arabic Booker aesthetic, as the award has only been in operation for a few years now. But\u00a0 it does seem to favor a sort of big-scope, historical-sweep novel, rather than the psychological or experimental or domestic.<\/p>\n

(Female) author Lionel Shriver talks about the same issue in The Independent<\/em><\/strong> in a piece headlined \u201cLet\u2019s up our game, not exclude men<\/a>.\u201d The only way to truly narrow the gender divide in literature is for female novelists to write some great books, says Shriver.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M.LYNX-QUALEY: Writer\/translator Fatima Naaot also told the paper she didn\u2019t see literary prizes as free and fair. But Naaot instead blamed the lack of prizes for women, to a greater extent, on women being in a male dominated society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[2263],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}