{"id":1749,"date":"2010-12-12T16:46:15","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T12:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2010-12-12T16:48:39","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T12:48:39","slug":"has-the-arabic-booker-committee-had-enough-of-egyptians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/has-the-arabic-booker-committee-had-enough-of-egyptians\/","title":{"rendered":"Has the Arabic Booker Had Enough of Egyptians?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I certainly hope winning the Naguib Mafhouz \u00a0Medal\u2014presented last night at the AUC\u2019s downtown campus\u2014doesn\u2019t negatively impact Brooklyn Heights<\/em>\u2018 chances at the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), for which it was shortlisted<\/a> just three days ago.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s certainly the theory put forth by Sayed Mahmoud<\/a>, who wrote yesterday for Ahram Online about the controversies of the 2011 Arabic Booker:<\/p>\n

The likelihood that Miral El-Tahawy\u2019s outstanding novel, \u201cBrooklyn Heights<\/em>\u201d will win the Naguib Mahfouz prize from the American University in Cairo\u2026 “will significantly reduce its chances of winning the Booker.”<\/p>\n

He also noted that the IPAF has probably filled its \u201cEgyptian quota\u201d by giving the award to Bahaa Taher (2008) and Youssef Ziedan (2009). Mahmoud is putting his IPAF bet, it seems, on a novel written by a Maghrebi author: Bensalem Himmich\u2019s My Tormentor <\/em>or Mohammed Achaari\u2019s The Arch and the Butterfly.<\/em><\/p>\n

But, in any case, al-Tahawy\u2019s winning the Mahfouz award marks\u2014as I write in a piece for Al Masry Al Youm <\/em><\/a>that should be out today\u2014the tremendous distance Egyptian author Miral al-Tahawy has traveled: \u201cfrom a girl in Sharqiya whose mother said \u2018this translation thing is the last thing we need!\u2019 to an award-winning novelist of international standing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al-Tahawy was born to a Bedouin family in the Egyptian Delta region in 1968. In her remarks, she talked about how, when her first book, The Tent,<\/em> was being translated into English by Anthony Calderbank, her brothers answered Calderbank\u2019s questions about her novel on her behalf. \u201cI would stand behind the door and eavesdrop on my own stories that were being reinvented,\u201d al-Tahawy told the audience.<\/p>\n

However, al-Tahawy\u2019s rise has certainly been coming on for a while. Prominent Somali author Nuruddin Farah, when at the University of Minnesota several years ago, was asked who the \u201cnext big thing of global fiction\u201d would be. Farah pointed to al-Tahawy and her Blue Aubergine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Prize judge and literary critic Dr. Gaber Asfour gave the Naguib Mahfouz Memorial Lecture, presented on what would\u2019ve been Mahfouz\u2019s 99th birthday, and judge\/academic Dr. Samia Mehrez gave the award announcement and spoke about Brooklyn Heights<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY – Miral El-Tahawy’s wonderful novel “Brooklyn Heights” has been showered with praise. Is it, however, to be the subject of anti-Egyptian bias? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,80,5],"tags":[3130,3121,3125,3118,18300,3129,18291,3133,3126,3132,3131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749"}],"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=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}