DUBAI: Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah’s “The Second War of the Dog” has won 2018’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Here, we look at former winning books that have been translated into English.
‘Frankenstein in Baghdad’
Ahmed Saadawi
This thriller, which won in 2014, is set in an Iraq beset by political instability. Protagonist Hadi Al-Attag sews together the body parts of those killed in explosions, creating a monster that soon goes missing. The dark tale was published in Arabic in 2013 and was then translated into English in 2018.
‘The Bamboo Stalk’
Saud Alsanousi
This tale of endurance in the face of abandonment begins when Josephine comes to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a housemaid. The son of the household decides to marry her in secret, but deserts her when she falls pregnant. The novel, which won the prize in 2013, tells the story of the neglected child.
‘The Druze of Belgrade’
Rabee Jaber
After the 1860 civil war in Mount Lebanon, Druze fighters forced into exile in the Balkans are joined by a Christian egg seller from Beirut called Hanna Yacoub. The book, which won the prize in 2012, follows the group’s adventures as they struggle to stay alive in a foreign land.
‘The Dove’s Necklace’
Raja Alem
This complex story, which won the 2011 prize, is told by one of the few women on the list of awardees. The plot centers on a police officer who is incapable of finding a young woman’s killer. The Saudi author takes the reader on a spiritual journey across time and space to solve the mystery.
‘Azazeel’
Youssef Ziedan
Set in the fifth century in Alexandria and northern Syria, 2009’s winning book tells the story of the fight between Christianity and Paganism within one monk — as he struggles to harmonize his contending inner beliefs — and within the wider public.
Sunset Oasis
Bahaa Taher
The novel — 2008’s winning book — follows the life of a middle-aged Egyptian government official who is sent to govern the oasis of Siwa by his British superiors as punishment for his role in a failed revolt in 1882. His wife accompanies him, putting to bed any hopes he had of using the mission to find himself.
Six award-winning Arab books you can read in English
Six award-winning Arab books you can read in English
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Organic Line’
- Once recognized, however, the line has seismic repercussions for rethinking foundational concepts such as mark, limit, surface, and edge
Author: IRENE SMALL
What would it mean to treat an interval of space as a line, thus drawing an empty void into a constellation of art and meaning-laden things? In this book, Irene Small elucidates the signal discovery of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark in 1954: a fissure of space between material elements that Clark called “the organic line.”
For much of the history of art, Clark’s discovery, much like the organic line, has escaped legibility. Once recognized, however, the line has seismic repercussions for rethinking foundational concepts such as mark, limit, surface, and edge.
What We Are Reading Today: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold
In Citizen Marx, Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism.
Marx’s relation to republicanism changed over the course of his life, but its complex influence on his thought cannot be reduced to wholesale adoption or rejection. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism.
One of Marx’s principal political values, Leipold contends, was a republican conception of freedom, according to which one is unfree when subjected to arbitrary power.
Placing Marx’s republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx’s shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad periods. One of Marx’s great contributions, Leipold suggests, was to place politics (and especially democratic politics) at the heart of socialism.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elusive Cures’ by Nicole Rust
Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected.
We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, from Alzheimer’s to depression, and many medications we do have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all.
Tackling brain disorders is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes readers along on her personal journey to answer this question.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Atlas of Birds’ by Mike Unwin
“The Atlas of Birds” captures the breathtaking diversity of birds, and illuminates their conservation status around the world.
Full-color maps show where birds are found, both by country and terrain, and reveal how an astounding variety of behavioral adaptations—from flight and feeding to nest building and song—have enabled them to thrive in virtually every habitat on Earth.
Maps of individual journeys and global flyways chart the amazing phenomenon of bird migration, while bird classification is explained using maps for each order and many key families.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘When the Bombs Stopped’
- Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land
Author: ERIN LIN
Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tonnes of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.
What began as a secret CIA infiltration of Laos eventually expanded into Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh trail fought primarily with bombs.
Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. In “When the Bombs Stopped,” Erin Lin investigates the consequences of the US bombing campaign across post conflict Cambodia.
