Mohammed Tarazi Wins 2024 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for ‘Muted Microphone’

DECEMBER 11, 2024 — At a dowtown Cairo ceremony, the American University in Cairo Press today announced that the 2024 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature had been awarded to Lebanese novelist Mohammed Tarazi for his 2023 novel ميكروفون كاتم صوت (which AUC Press is titling Muted Microphone).

The novel, described by its publishers as a black comedy, opens in Tyre, Lebanon in 2019, in a setting rocked by “the spread of COVID-19, the scarcity of household essentials, and the aftermath of the Beirut Port explosion.” Prize judge Ahmed Taoibaoui writes that here, muted microphones contrast with loudspeakers that “ring out with the slogans of the hegemonic political party in power,” and that the novel “resonates with the speech of these silenced voices.”

The novel is set in a cemetery near the sea, and its protagonist is a young man named Sultan, born in a house that overlooks the cemetery. Sultan is eager to emigrate and leave Lebanon behind, but finds himself, “in the end, trapped between two cemeteries.”

In his remarks at the ceremony, author Mohammed Tarazi commented on the irony of winning a Mahfouz award, given that the novel’s initial spark was a quote by Mahfouz that he came across in a newspaper: “‘A person’s homeland is not the place where they were born, but the place where all their attempts to escape end.'” Tarazi added that this quote “perfectly wraps up the life of the novel’s protagonist, Sultan— a young man who did everything he could to survive the graveyard in which he was born.”

This year’s winner was chosen from a shortlist of six by judges Sarah Enany (chair), Kay Heikkinen, Ahmed Taibaoui, Youssef Rakha, and Maysa Zaki.

The 2024 judging panel read more than 180 submissions from 18 countries. This year’s other five shortlistees were: The Sky is Smoking Cigarettes (al-Sama’ tudakhin al-saga’ir) by Wajdi al-Ahdal, The Glass Woman (al-Sayyida al-zujajiya) by Amr El-Adly, The Scribe: Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (al-Warraq Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi) by Hisham Eid, My Name is Zayzafun (Ismi Zayzafun) by Sausan Jamil Hasan, and House of the Judge: The Journey of Qassim bin Yunis (Bayt al-qadi: masirat Qasim bin Yunis) by Mahmoud Adel Taha.

In prepared remarks, Enany said that judges had chosen Muted Microphone for its “deep metaphor and imagery and powerful characters, as well as its smooth narrative style.” She added that while the novel is set in contemporary Lebanon, it depicts a reality for all of those “who live in cities that stifle souls and kill dreams.”

Judge Yusuf Rakha added: “Tarazi’s novel combines the metaphor of the loudspeaker as a means of disinformation and oppression with that of the undertaker as a witness of the kind of intrigue that results in death and destruction but also, however unwillingly, a kind of participant in it. With a maximal cast of characters and gripping drama, the narrative achieves a truly architectural level of precision,
sacrificing neither realism nor inventiveness in the process. In gripping, absorbing, and profound tones, makes a powerful, complex statement about the cost of politics for the ordinary Arab citizen today.”

Lebanese novelist Mohammad Tarazi is a much-awarded author who is currently based in South Sudan. He has written nine novels, many of which have won wide acclaim: ميكروفون كاتم صوت was awarded the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction 2024, and he has been shortlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award six times. His Islands of Cloves won the Ghassan Kanafani Prize for Fiction in Jordan, and his Nostalgia received the Tawfiq Bakkar Prize for Arabic Fiction in Tunisia in 2019.

The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, established in 1996, “recognizes the best contemporary novel published in Arabic in the past two years.” It grants both a $5,000 cash prize and the offer of an English translation of their work, published by AUC Press’s Hoopoe imprint.

Tarazi concluded his talk:

I wrote this novel while surrounded by microphones that stifled my voice and bound my tongue. My people were bankrupt, torn between graves and crammed onto migrant boats bound for death. Hospital doors were shut to the sick, while the leader’s entourage stockpiled medicine and hoarded life’s other essentials. I wrote in silence, tears streaming down my face, as if I were one of the mute characters I brought to life in the novel. Perhaps it was this silence that struck a chord with the distinguished members of the committee, who chose to grant me the highest honor a writer can aspire to “a voice”. This voice came in the form of a medal bearing the name of the great writer, Naguib Mahfouz, placing me among the remarkable creators recognized for their literary excellence and unwavering stand against hatred and tyranny. Thank you—and thank you to everyone here this evening for sharing these joyful moments with me.

More about the Naguib Mahfouz medal, including past winners, is available at the AUC Press website.