Country by Country: Where the International Prize for Arabic Fiction Submissions Came From
International Prize for Arabic Fiction organizers have confirmed that the 2018 longlist will come out on Wednesday, January 17:
As we wait for this year’s longlist, prize organizers offered a country-by-country breakdown of who wrote this year’s submissions. There were 124 total submissions for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, currently being considered by the year’s five judges, whose names will be kept confidential until the shortlist is announced.
This year, the 124 submissions came from 79 total publishers.
There were submissions from writers of 14 different nationalities. Unsurprisingly, the largest group was Egyptians, with 34 titles and 27% of the submissions. Only one book by a Yemeni author was submitted this year, and none of the submitted titles were written by authors from Bahrain, Djibouti, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, or the UAE.
| Country of
Author |
2018 submission numbers | % of total submissions (124) |
| Algeria | 5 | 4% |
| Egypt | 34 | 27% |
| Iraq | 11 | 9% |
| Jordan | 7 | 6% |
| Kuwait | 6 | 5% |
| Lebanon | 9 | 7% |
| Morocco | 9 | 7% |
| Oman | 3 | 2% |
| Palestine | 8 | 6% |
| Saudi Arabia | 7 | 6% |
| Sudan | 6 | 5% |
| Syria | 12 | 10% |
| Tunisia | 6 | 5% |
| Yemen | 1 | 1% |
| 124 |
According to prize administrator Fleur Montanaro, there were 33 submissions of novels by authors under 40, and thirty of this year’s submissions — about a quarter — were books by women.