Palestinian Writer Suad Amiry Wins Italy’s Nonino Prize for Promoting Peace

Sharp, funny Palestinian writer Suad Amiry has won one of Italy’s Nonino prizes — along with Portugeuse novelist Antonio Lobo Antunes, Italian psychiatrist Giuseppe Dell’Acqua, and French philosopher Michel Serres — for “her work to promote peace”:

The author of Nothing to Lose But Your Life, Menopausal Palestine, and Sharon and My Mother-in-law was awarded the ‘Risit d’Aur’ prize, which is set to be presented at a ceremony on January 25.

Amiry, whose signature style is fast-paced and funny, was commended for the subtle ironies of Sharon and My Mother-in-law and her support for human rights and dignity in Nothing to Lose But Your Life.

Amiry’s Sharon and My-Mother-in-law, which as has been translated into some twenty languages, also won the prestigious italian literary Prize Viareggio Versilia in 2004.

This was the 39th edition of the Nonino prize. Among previous Nonino winners are authors and thinkers Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Adonis, Mahasweta Devi, Mo Yan, Amin Maalouf, Javier Marìas, and Edward Said.

The awards were decided by an international jury chaired by Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul and including Ermanno Olmi, Claudio Magris, Edgar Morin, and researcher Fabiola Giannotti, who won the prize last year.