On December 1, the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature announced the 2023 shortlist for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
Judged by Ros Schwartz, Tony Calderbank, Sarah Enany, and Barbara Schwepcke, the prize’s shortlist features seven entries: five standalone books and a combined nomination for the first two books in Sonia Nimr’s Thunderbird series. They are:
- The Turban and the Hat by Sonallah Ibrahim, translated by Bruce Fudge (Seagull Books, 2022)
- Firefly by Jabbour Douaihy, translated by Paula Haydar and Nadine Sinno (Seagull Books, 2022)
- The King of India by Jabbour Douaihy, translated by Paula Haydar (Interlink Books, 2022)
- What Have you Left Behind? by Bushra al-Maqtari, translated by Sawad Hussain (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022)
- Mister N by Najwa Barakat, translated by Luke Leafgren (And Other Stories, 2022)
- Thunderbird, Books One & Two by Sonia Nimr, translated by M Lynx Qualey (CMES: Emerging Voices from the Middle East Series, University of Texas Press, 2022)
In their report, the judges write:
This year’s crop of entries is strangely and overwhelmingly sombre, as sobering events in the region are echoed both by contemporary portrayals of hapless characters doing their best to survive various atrocities – displacement, forced conversion, loss of home, illness, rape, torture – and historical retellings that cover similar ground. In a very real way, Arab novelists appear, at least from this selection, to be seeking a kind of method in the madness of the upheavals of today, from the southernmost tip to the northernmost point of the Arabian Peninsula – “from the Levant to Yemen,” as the Arab catchphrase goes – so as to make sense of the ongoing horrors and atrocities, while at the same time attempting to ensure that individual voices do not get lost in the background.
Notably, author Jabbour Douaihy and translator Paula Haydar appear on the list twice, while Sawad Hussain’s translation of Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have you Left Behind? was also shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Luke Leafgren’s translation of Najwa Barakat’s Mister N was also shortlisted for the 2023 EBRD Literature Prize.
According to the trustees:
In the eighteenth year of the prize there were 20 entries by 11 different publishers. They comprised 18 novels, a poetry collection, and a work that is a collection of testimonies. There are 18 authors (8 female and 10 male, and some have more than one entry). There were also 18 translators altogether, 9 female and 9 male, some appearing more than once.