DECEMBER 1, 2022 – The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation today announced their three-title shortlist, made up of three very different novels — two from Egypt and a third from Morocco.
The shortlisted titles are Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s The Men Who Swallowed the Sun, translated by the late Humphrey Davies; Yassin Adnan’s Hot Maroc, translated by Alexander E. Elinson, and Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping, translated by Robin Moger.
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This year’s judges are Charis Olszok (chair), Susheila Nasta, Katharine Halls and Becki Maddock. The three-book shortlist was chosen from among 17 submissions to this year’s prize.
About Davies’ translation of The Men Who Swallowed the Sun, judges said it was a feat of “research, accuracy and creativity,” while calling Hot Maroc “a vivid, satirical, and compelling panorama of Marrakesh’s changing landscape.” And judges called Kheir’s Slipping, in Robin Moger’s translation, “a subtle, evocative, and moving portrait of Cairo and Alexandria post-revolution.”
The prize — for a published translation in English of a book published in 1967 or later — brings its winning translator £3,000. This year’s winner is set to be announced by organizers in early January 2023, which an awards ceremony set for February 8, 2023.
The prize’s first-ever winner, in 2006, was Humphrey Davies, who is posthumously shortlisted for this year’s prize.
Also read:
Author Mohamed Kheir on Surreal Coincidences and the Mysteries of Translation
Alex Elinson: On Translating the Linguistic Diversity of ‘Hot Maroc’
An Excerpt from Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s ‘Men Who Swallowed the Sun’
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