Submit for the 2012 Naguib Mahfouz Award Now (Hurry)

The American University in Cairo Press is now reading for the seventeenth annual Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. The award, which usually means a silver medal, $1,000, and translation and publication by AUC Press, last year went to “the revolutionary creativity of the Egyptian people.”

This year, as in the past, the award is set to be presented on December 11, the birthday of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. It will be given out by the AUC president and whoever happens to the Egypt’s Minister of Culture that day.

According to a release from AUC Press, “New and recent works published in Arabic (but not yet in English) will be considered in the coming months by the Mahfouz Award Committee of the AUC Press, which includes Dr. Tahia Abdel Nasser, Dr. Shereen Abouelnaga, Dr. Humphrey Davies, Dr. Mona Tolba, Mr. Abdo Wazen.”

This marks a big shakeup of the awards committee, which is a good thing both for those who stepped down — and can thus focus on other things — and for the award, which who knows, might turn up a different sort of book.

The nitty-gritty:

Authors, translators, critics, and publishers who may wish to submit nominations for the 2012 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature should present their recommendations (consisting of five copies of the original Arabic book and the author’s CV) to the Mahfouz Award Committee, c/o the AUC Press, as early as possible, but not later than July 15, 2010.

Who has won the Naguib Mahfouz medal in the last sixteen years? Well, a lot of people. See the list here.

Note: I am finally back online after an unexpectedly long journey from Cairo; still, for the coming weeks, my Internet access will be intermittent. Thanks for all your support and assistance. I can already see it will be quite difficult to maintain this website from the far-far provinces.