Organizers have announced that the winner of the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) is set to be announced at noon online on Tuesday, April 14:
The announcement will be made at noon London and Casablanca time, 1 p.m. in Cairo, when it’s 2 p.m. in Baghdad, and 3 p.m. in Abu Dhabi via a video announcement on YouTube, which will also be on the IPAF website.
The video announcement promises to include “speeches and comments from the IPAF team who run the prize, this year’s Chair of Judges Muhsin Al-Musawi, and the winning author.”
There is generally also a press conference following the announcement. Organizers have said that, this year, “in lieu of a press conference, we will be collating questions for the winner from media to be answered as part of an official IPAF video following the announcement.”
The year’s six-book shortlist includes one previous shortlistee (the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Jabbour Douaihy) and a previous winner, Youssef Ziedan, who took the 2009 prize for his novel Azazeel, which was later translated to English by Humphrey Davies.
The full six-book shortlist is:
The Spartan Court by Abdelouahab Aissaoui
The Russian Quarter by Khalil Alrez
The King of India by Jabbour Douaihy
Firewood of Sarajevo by Said Khatibi
Fardeqan – the Detention of the Great Sheikh by Youssef Ziedan
Read more on and from the shortlisted authors:
Abdelouahab Aissaoui on Publishing Realities, Challenges, and Dreams in Algeria
Jabbour Douaihy on ‘The King of India’
Said Khatibi on the Entanglements of Story in Bosnia and Algeria
‘Firewood of Sarajevo’: Testimonies against Amnesia and for an Alternative History
New Fiction: An Excerpt from Alia Mamdouh’s IPAF-longlisted ‘The Tank’
The shortlisted authors’ novels already in English translation:
Jabbour Douaihy’s Autumn Equinox ,tr. Nay Hannawi, won the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award.
Douaihy’s June Rain was shortlisted for the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2008 and published in English, in Paula Haydar’s translation, in 2014.
Douaihy’s The American Neighborhood, also translated by Haydar, was longlisted for the IPAF in 2015.
Douaihy’s Printed in Beirut was, similarly, translated by Haydar.
Douaihy’s novel The Vagrant, shortlisted for the IPAF 2012, is not in English. However, a translation by Stephanie Dujols won the 2013 ‘Prix de la Jeune Litterature Arabe.’
Said Khatibi’s Forty Years Waiting for Isabelle was translated by “Emisia Creative.”
Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel was translated by Jonathan Wright.
Alia Mamdouh’s Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad was translated by Peter Theroux.
Mamdouh’s Mothballs was also translated by Theroux.
Mamdouh’s The Loved Ones was translated by Marilyn Booth
