Yesterday, Tuesday, the International Prize for Arabic Fiction announced that 6 novels have been shortlisted, and that a winner will be announced on May 22nd.

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction stated, in a statement on its website, that the short list in its 15th session resulted in the arrival of 6 novels.

short list novels

The Egyptian novelist Tariq Imam entered the list with his novel "Maquette Cairo", which begins in the year of the revolution 2011, but quickly moves to a parallel and unknown Cairo that amaze and surprise the reader, as the places prepare their residents, as the novel's writer says in its first pages.

And on the list is the novel “Dilshad - A Biography of Hunger and Satisfaction” by the Omani writer Bushra Khalfan, which gropes the unknown history of Muscat through the story of a miserable man starving and poor in the city between the sea and the mountains, and the novel “Rose Diaries” by Emirati writer Reem Al Kamali, whose events take place in the mid-sixties of the last century before The establishment of the Union State in the Emirates.

Also in the short list is the novel by the Kuwaiti writer Khaled Al-Nasr Allah "The White Thread of the Night", which traces the struggle of the writer and the censor, as well as the novel "Bread at the Table of Uncle Milad" by the young Libyan writer Muhammad Al-Naas and "Prisoner of the Portuguese" by Moroccan Mohsen Al-Wakeili, winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Prize.

Each of the six shortlisted candidates will receive $10,000, and the Arab Booker Prize winner will receive an additional $50,000, and the winning novel will be announced on May 22, according to the same source.

The short list was chosen by a jury composed of 5 members, headed by the Tunisian novelist and academic Shukri Al-Mabkhout, and the membership of Iman Humaidan, a Lebanese writer and member of the managing board of the International PEN Club, Bayan Rehanova, a Bulgarian academic and translator, and Ashour Al-Tuwaibi, a doctor, poet and translator from Libya. and Saadia Mufreh, poet and critic from Kuwait.

All writers shortlisted for this year made it to the list for the first time, according to the statement.