AUGUST 30, 2024 — The American University in Cairo Press today announced the shortlist for the 2024 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, eighteen years after the Nobel laureate’s passing.
This year’s six shortlisted titles were chosen from 181 novels submitted from 18 countries.
The shortlist includes a multi-generational historical epic inspired by Egyptian folklore; the story of a man trapped between two cemeteries in post-2019 Lebanon; attempts to recover the ashes of a woman’s life in contemporary Syria; a journey with a ninth and tenth century philosopher; tales of a woman who became legend in 1970s Egypt; and the story of love and scars in contemporary Yemen.
The complete shortlist:
- The Sky is Smoking Cigarettes (al-Sama’ tudakhin al-saga’ir) by Wajdi al-Ahdal (Yemen)
- The Glass Woman (al-Sayyida al-zujajiya) by Amr El-Adly (Egypt)
- The Scribe: Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (al-Warraq Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi) by Hisham Eid (Egypt)
- My Name is Zayzafun (Ismi Zayzafun) by Sausan Jamil Hasan (Syria)
- House of the Judge: The Journey of Qassim bin Yunis (Bayt al-qadi: masirat Qasim bin Yunis) by Mahmoud Adel Taha (Egypt)
- Muted Microphone (Micrufun katim sawt) by Mohammed Tarazi (Lebanon).
You can find out more about the books at the AUC Press website.
This year’s panel of judges was chaired by Sarah Enany, a winner of the Banipal Prize for Literary Translation who is also a judge for this year’s ArabLit/Komet Kashakeel Arabic Flash Fiction prize. She is joined by novelist Ahmed Taibaoui, translator Kay Heikkinen, poet-novelist Youssef Rakha, and critic Maysa Zaki.
The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature was established by the American University in Cairo Press in 1996 and is awarded to “the best contemporary novel published in Arabic in the previous two years.”
The award consists of a cash prize of $5,000 as well as the translation into English of the winning novel and its publication under AUC Press’s fiction imprint, Hoopoe.
The winner of the medal is set to be announced in December 2024.