The International Prize for Arabic Fiction announced its long list of novels for the 2021 session, consisting of 16 novels issued during the period between July 1, 2019, and late August 2020, and were selected from among 121 novels that applied for the award.

According to the award's website statement, writers from 11 countries, ranging in age from 31 to 75 years, reached the long list of the award at its fourteenth session, and the novels deal with issues related to the reality of the Arab world today, from the suffering of Iraq and the spread of extremist groups, to the status of women in the Arab world.

Three of the accounts from the list are directed towards a police space, whose crimes were committed against the background of wars and conflicts in the region.

The long-list novels also took place in the spaces of Aden, Amman, Casablanca, Oran and other Arab cities as the arena for their events, and narrated human relations and the role of literature in enlightenment.

Among the list of sixteen novelists whose works reached the long list, there are many familiar names, including Jalal Barjas (shortlisted in 2019 for the novel "The Women of the Five Senses") and Mohsen al-Ramli (shortlisted twice in 2010 and 2013 for my novel. " Fingers' and “The President’s Gardens”) and Habib Salmi (twice shortlisted in 2009 and 2012 for the novels “The Fragrances of Marie Claire” and “Women of the Orchards”) and Youssef Fadel (shortlisted 2014 nominee for “A rare blue bird flying with me”) Mansoura Ezz El-Din (shortlisted in 2010 for "Beyond Paradise") and Hamed Al Nazer (shortlisted twice in 2016 and 2018 for the novels "The Prophecy of the Saqqa" and "The Black Peacock"), according to the award's statement.

The current round of the award witnessed the arrival of writers for the first time to the long list: Abdullah Al Busais, Abbas Baydoun, Ahmed Zain, Abdel Majid Sabata, Abdel Latif Ould Abdullah, Abdullah Al Ayyaf, Amira Ghonaim, Amara Lakhous, Donia Mikhael and Sarah Al Nems .

The novels "A Pit to the Sky", "Basra Gardens" and "File 42" are included in the award's long list (social media)

Notebooks Warraq

For his part, the Jordanian writer Jalal Barjas expressed his stamina with the arrival of his novel "Notebooks of Warraq" for the long list, and told Al-Jazeera Net that this access "is a victory for my readers who believed in my word, and read my novel during the previous period from which people suffered from what the Corona virus left our lives, as they faced isolation." It was a pleasure to read, and it became possible for them to transcend everything imposed by the pandemic, just as it became for me to resort to writing in defense of my humanity. "

The novel tells the story of "Warraq", a reclusive intellectual and an avid reader of novels who loses his family and home, and becomes homeless, like the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes.

A number of events happen to him that make him the talk of the Arab street at a time when new social media has become its most important component.

Al-Warraq wears the characters he reads about in novels, and he acts through them, but as a result of isolation, loneliness, homelessness, and the cruelty he faced in a noisy world, his condition worsens and his schizophrenia is completed, so that he lives a conflict between two voices within him: one incited to commit a number of crimes in the face of a reality that It gives him his right to live, and the second stands with his face, leaning on a deep cognitive predicate.

In addition to this trend, the novel reveals who will triumph over the other, and how the stories are intertwined together to lead to a main saying in the novel that “fear will inevitably lead to ruin.” It also raises a number of questions, the most important of which are: To what extent an individual can shape his life in isolation from what is around him. Effects?

And when can the second personality within a person go out into the open, and the person turns into a monster?

New Arabic novels

In his novel "Qaf Killer Sen Saeed", Kuwaiti Abdullah Al-Busais narrates a captivating narrative and an exciting plot, a police story with psychological dimensions, about the case of a young investigator who re-investigates the disappearance of a teenager 20 years ago, to reveal many social and moral aspects.

In his novel "Cans of Desire", the Lebanese poet Abbas Baydoun presents the story of a Lebanese girl from a remote suburb in a complex social reality, and in his novel "Bint Dijla" Iraqi novelist Mohsen al-Ramli completes his story "The President's Gardens", reviewing the cruel human souls and the story of a country torn apart by clan, party and class disputes. Ruling.

In “Fruits for the Crows” by Ahmed Zain, the Yemeni novelist chronicles the diaspora of southern Yemen between colonialism and communism, reviewing hot political events, and in the novel “Longing for the Neighbor” by the Tunisian writer residing in Paris, Habib Salmi, the Arab reader enters the mazes, worlds and hot issues through the misguided simplicity game. And working on small details and forgotten stories in the crowd of big cities, while the question of identity is present in various forms.

Through a game of cunning and cynical seduction and an uncommon fictitious love story that brings together a university professor Stenia with a fiftieth maid, nothing that seems to bring them together except that they are Tunisians and reside in the same architecture.

A binary story tied by two parties in a love affair, contradictory, oscillating, ambiguous, shifting and mysterious, but this bilateral story opens up to other influential personalities and important issues.

The novels "Longing for the Neighbor", "Fruit for the Crows" and "Bint Degla" within the long list of the award (social networking sites)

In the novel "Al-Malaf 42" by novelist Abdel-Majid Sebata, the Moroccan writer re-searches the issue of "poisoned oils", a forgotten tragedy that belongs to post-independence Morocco, and also included in the long list the novel "Ain Hammurabi" by the Algerian writer and engineer Abdellatif Ould Abdallah, and "Basateen Al-Basra" by the Egyptian novelist and journalist Mansoura Ezz El-Din.

The list also included the novels "A Hole to the Sky" by the Saudi writer Abdullah Al Ayyaf, "Nazla Dar Al-Akaber" by Tunisian novelist and academic Amira Ghneim, "Bird of the Night" by the Algerian novelist Amara Lakhous, "Jim" by his compatriot Sarah Al-Nems, and "Hayat The Butterflies "by the Moroccan novelist and playwright Youssef Fadel, while Sudan participated in a single novel," Einan Khadraawan, "by journalist and novelist Hamid Al-Nazer.

Previous withdrawal

Arab intellectuals and writers had announced their withdrawal from the award’s activities on the background of the announcement of the normalization agreement between Israel and the Emirates, among them the Palestinian poet and novelist Ahmed Abu Salim, who withdrew the nomination of his novel “Promethana” from the award. On the other hand, the Palestinian writer and academic Khaled Al-Hroub confirmed that he refused to chair a jury. The International Prize for Arabic Fiction this year, knowing that he is a former member of its Board of Trustees.

Last September, 17 former winners of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, as well as chairmen and members of arbitration committees and former members of the Board of Trustees of various Arab nationalities, signed an appeal to the Award’s Board of Trustees calling for the suspension of Emirati funding for it against the background of normalization with Israel, and called the statement. The current Board of Trustees is to assume its historical cultural responsibility to protect the award by ending the Emirati funding, in order to preserve the award’s credibility and independence.