Out of 128 participation novels and nominations, the "International Prize for Arabic Fiction" announced its long list for its 2020 session, and included 16 Arab novels for 13 writers and three female writers from nine countries: Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt and Morocco .
The fate of the Arab city seemed a common topic for many novels, some of which deal with Aleppo, Algiers, and Rabat, and concerned with the fate of individuals trying to live in the midst of war and ruin, according to the award statement published on its official website.
Among the 16 names nominated for winning the prize - estimated at fifty thousand dollars - seven books whose works have already reached the long list, and nine writers join for the first time on the long list, and they are Libyan Aisha Ibrahim, the Moroccan Hassan Oored, the Syrian Khalil Al-Raz and Salim Barakat, and the two Iraqis, Azhar Zarzis, Alia Mamdouh, the two Algerians, Saeed Khatibi, Abdel-Wahhab Essaoui, and the Tunisian Mohamed Essa El-Moadab.
Long list novels
The list included Jabour Al-Duwaihi's novel "King of India", and the Lebanese academic and writer had previously nominated for the short list in 2008 about "June rain" and in 2012 about "homeless person", and he reached the long list in 2015 about "The American Quarter".
In his novel, published by Dar Al-Saqi, he tells an exciting story that revolves around an expatriate returning to his homeland with a painting presented by his Parisian girlfriend, a crime on the borders of a village where the myth is mixed with love, promises of false revolution and sectarianism.
Through his novel, "Trolem Ladders", the Algerian writer Samir Qassimi - who reached the long list in 2010 about a "wonderful day of death" - tells a bold story about the political history of Algeria in a sarcastic way, and the novel revolves in "fantasy" worlds that simulate the reality in the Algerian capital where it intersects Tales of the protagonists with the Algerian revolution.
In the novel “Safar Berlak” by the Saudi writer Maqbool Al-Alwi - the candidate for the long list in 2011 about his first novel “Fitna in Jeddah” - the protagonist is captured as a captive of the Ottoman soldiers in the events known as the “Great Arab Revolution” to find himself moving between cities in a difficult and difficult life .
The "Verdakan" novel by Youssef Zaidan - the winner of the award in 2009 for "Azazel" - follows the biography of Sheikh President Ibn Sina, on an interesting journey from his hometown in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, then he takes over the ministry and detains him in the castle from which he quoted the name of the novel until his death.
Bashir, the mufti of the Algerian writer and journalist who was nominated in the short list in 2012 about "The Doll of Fire", deals with major existential questions in the miserable and brutal life of the hero who loves to kill, and he engages in the death squad of the National Gendarmerie in an attempt to confront the terrorist gunmen in a time that does not give Value to a human being.
The long list includes the novel "Nobody Prayed" by Syrian writer Khaled Khalifa, the candidate for the short list twice, about "In Praise of Hate" in 2008 and "No Knives in the Kitchens of this City" in 2014.
The novel takes place in Aleppo, Syria, in which a river overflows its lives on its banks in the beginning of the twentieth century, and the flood changes life in a city where nothing is as it was before the flood, including the fate of people and their small stories, their social, political and religious lives, and their relationship with love and death .
New writers
In the Syrian context, she joined the list, "What about the Jewish woman Rachel?" The Syrian Kurdish novelist Salim Barakat, who reached the long list of the award for the first time for his account exploring the days following the 1967 setback, with his campaign of state tyranny and the role of intelligence in facilitating the emigration of Jews from the city of Qamishli (northeastern Syria) that includes a Jewish neighborhood and a love story Exciting.
In his novel, "Firewood of Sarajevo," the young Algerian writer Said Khatibi recounts two intersecting scholars in Algeria and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the last century ended in bloody and painful suffering because of the fighting between the brothers of the homeland.
Also from the countries of the Arab Maghreb, which witnessed the participation of seven novels on the list, the novel by the Tunisian writer and novelist Mohamed Issa, the polite "Hammam Al-Dahab", covered the journey of the Jewish minority that moved to French Marseille to escape the oppression of the Nazi army, but the heroine of the novel tries to discover its roots by returning to Tunisia and studying History, fall in love with a Tunisian Muslim student.
From Morocco, the novelist and novelist Hassan Oored “Rabat Al-Mutanabi” reached the long list of the award, in which the professor of political science at Mohamed V University narrated the solutions of Al-Mutanabi the poet in the city of Rabat in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and his attempt to understand the modern world before it falls into the hands of security men, and is deposited in a hospital Mental illness.
For the first time in the long list of the Libyan novelist Aisha Ibrahim award, with her novel "War of Ghazala", in which she explores an ancient time, she discovered the cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing in the ancient history of her country.
The author travels with cave inscriptions, Pharaonic mummies, and symbols that deal with the history of Libya and the stability of tribes and peoples in an ancient kingdom.
In the novel "Sleeping in the Cherry Field," the Iraqi writer and journalist Azhar Gerges tells the story of the Iraqi immigrant Saeed, who works as a postman in the Norwegian city of Oslo, and the writer's story intersects with the protagonist who fulfills his dream of writing stories in Norway, and events take place in the European exile from which a hero returns The novel follows an emergency message from Baghdad to live a very cruel experience in his country.
The young Algerian novel, Abdel Wahab Issawi, "The Spartan Diwan" came as the fourth Algerian novel on the long list. It tells the stories of five personalities at the beginning of the 19th century in Algeria, and their lives intersect with the Ottoman and French presence.
The novel by the Egyptian writer Rasha Adly, "The Last Days of the Pasha," reached the long list, and it tells about the trip of the giraffe facilities that the founder of modern Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, presented to the King of France.
And on his novel "The Russian Quarter", the Syrian writer and translator Khalil Al-Raz arrived in the list, through his story, in which he tells about an interpreter who lives in the zoo in the Russian Quarter, who refuses to enter the war surrounding him for years.
The list included the novel by Iraqi writer Alia Mamdouh "Al-Tanki", in which she narrates the relationship of a person with his stolen homeland and imagines her homeland after returning from exile to witness the tremendous changes that occurred in the country and society.
The long list was chosen by a jury consisting of five members, headed by Mohsen Jassim Al-Mousawi, an Iraqi critic and professor of Arab and Comparative Studies at Columbia University, New York, and the membership of Pierre Abi Saab, the Lebanese critic and journalist, founder of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and Victoria Zaritovskaya, A Russian academic and researcher, has transferred many Arabic novels to Russian, including the novel "Frankstein in Baghdad" by Ahmed Saadawi, the award winner in 2014, and Amine Zaoui, an Algerian novelist who writes in both Arabic and French, and professor of comparative literature and contemporary thought at the University of Algiers In addition to Reem Majed, she is a TV journalist and journalist from Egypt, and a trainer in journalism and media, according to the award's statement.