Nathalie Handal, Susan Abulhawa Win Palestine Book Awards
The winners of the 2020 Palestine Book Awards were announced this evening in an online event:
The awards, now in their ninth year, annually and celebrates books in English about Palestine, either in translation or written originally in English. It is also, according to organizers, an attempt to encourage authors and publishers to produce more books on Palestine.
Thirty-eight books were considered for the prize, seven were shortlisted, and four books were declared winners in three different categories:
- Lifetime Achievement Award:
Finbarr Barry Flood (Editor)
There Where You Are Not: Selected Writings of Kamal Boullata (Hirmer Verlag, Munich) - Creative Award:
Nathalie Handal
Life in a Country Album (University Of Pittsburgh Press) - Creative Award:
Susan Abulhawa
Against the Loveless World (Bloomsbury Circus) - Academic Award:
Rashid Khalidi
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (Metropolitan Books/henry Holt & Company)
The awards ceremony began with a keynote address by Rima Khalaf, followed by a roundtable discussion with the shortlisted authors. There was one book in translation this year, Sahar Khalifeh’s Passage to the Plaza, translated by Sawad Hussain.
This year’s panel of judges is made up of: novelist Haifa Zangana, journalist Ibrahim Darwish, NGO worker Alan Waddams, literary critic Subhi Hadidi, academic Nur Masalha, and journalist Victoria Brittain.