It’s literary prize season! When the Sawiris Cultural Awards were announced at the start of 2023, novelist Shady Lewis Botros turned his novel award down, launching a storm of criticism, defense, and discussion. Is it bad manners or good politics to turn down a prize? How do different prizes affect the literary landscape? How is the 2023 prize season shaping up?
Show Notes:
Mada Masr published “A conversation with Shady Lewis Botros on the genealogy of literary refusal”
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction recently announced their 2023 longlist, with a historically high number of women writers (half).
Also in Jan 2023, Banipal Prize judges announced that two novels had won their 2022 prize. By coincidence, we did a joint episode on those two novels.
PEN America recently announced their lit-prize longlists. Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, translated by Robyn Creswell, made the poetry-in-translation longlist.
In December 2022, Fatima Qandil’s Empty Cages won the Naguib Mahfouz medal, and she said it was the first time she’d won a prize.
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