The 2010 Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, the fifth year of the prize, is awarded to Humphrey Davies for his translation of the novel Yalo by Elias Khoury, published by Maclehose Press in the UK.
Humphrey Davies is also a runner-up this year for his translation of Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher, published by Sceptre, UK and recently nominated for the 2011 IMPAC Prize. The Arabic original of Sunset Oasis won the inaugural 2008 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Both Yalo and Sunset Oasis were long-listed last year for the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
A further runner-up is Kareem James Abu-Zeid for his translation of Cities without Palms by Tarek Etayeb, published by Arabia Books, UK.
The 2010 judges were author Margaret Drabble DBE, writer, translator and Professor of Comparative Literature at Warwick University Susan Bassnett, translator of contemporary Arabic literature of Georgetown University Elliott Colla, and on behalf of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature Yasir Suleiman, Professor of Modern Arabic Studies and Head of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.
The Winner
Humphrey Davies for his translation of Yalo by Elias Khoury
On being told the news, Humphrey declared: “I’m over the moon. To win the Banipal Prize two-and-a half times in five years is indeed a signal honour.”
Elias Khoury was equally thrilled and told Banipal: “Congratulations to Humphrey. It is great that he has won the prize twice, and both times I have had the honour of accompanying his achievements with my two novels.”
Maclehose Press publisher Christopher MacLehose added: “It will give the author as much pleasure as it does his publisher that Humphrey Davies should have been awarded this distinguished prize for his second successive translation of Elias Khoury's work. The award recognises a remarkable partnership and will give a welcome prominence to the fiction of an exceptional writer as also of his invaluable collaborator.”
Elias Khoury
In the fifth year of the prize, by coincidence, the names of both the winning translator and the author are the same as those of the first year – Humphrey Davies won the inaugural 2006 prize for his translation of Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun (published 2005). In 2000 Humphrey Davies published his first literary translation in Banipal magazine, a short story in Egyptian colloquial, “Rat”, by Sayed Ragab. Then came Thebes at War by Naguib Mahfouz (2003), Alaa Aswany’s best-selling The Yacoubian Building (2004) and his short stories Friendly Fire (2009), Ahmed Alaidy’s Being Abbas el Abd (2006), Gamal al-Ghitani’s Pyramid Texts and Hamdy el-Gazzar’s Black Magic (both 2007), Mohamed Mustagab’s Tales of Dayrut (2008) and Khaled al-Berry’s Life Is More Beautiful Than Paradise (2009), all originally for the pioneering AUC press. He has also edited and translated the Ottoman-era work Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded by Yusuf al-Shirbini (Leuven: Peeters, 2004 and 2007). Bahaa Taher’s novel Sunset Oasis won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction’s first prize in 2007 and Humphrey Davies was chosen as translator. This year Maclehose Press will publish another novel by the Khoury-Davies team, As Though She Were Sleeping (due May 2011). Also forthcoming translated by Humphrey Davies is the sequel to Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah (Bloomsbury 2011), and Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaqq Alley (AUCP 2011).
US readers who want to read Humphrey Davies's translation of Yalo will probably have to buy it from outside the USA since the US edition, published by Archipelago Press, is translated by Peter Theroux. This edition was shortlisted for the 2009 US Best Translated Book Award.
Banipal 40 – LIterature from Libya will include reviews of two novels by Elias Khoury in English translation – Yalo and White Masks. Click here for Banipal magazine's home page to join the email listing and receive news of Banipal 40's publication in March.
Runner-up: Humphrey Davies for his translation of Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher
Runner-up: Kareem James Abu-ZeidKareem James Abu-Zeid for his translation of Cities without Palms by Tarek Etayeb
On being told the result, Kareem James Abu-Zeid said: “It’s a real honor for me to be selected as one of the runners up, especially since this was the first novel that I have translated.”
Kareem Abu-Zeid has translated works by poets from Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq and is currently translating Eltayeb’s sequel to Cities Without Palms, The Palm House (AUC Press 2011) as well as The Far-Off Call (AUC Press 2012) by Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni.
Born into an Egyptian American family, Kareem Abu-Zeid has lived an itinerant life around the Middle East, the US, and Europe. He received his BA from Princeton University in 2003 in French and German Literature, and was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Germany as well as a CASA Fellow at the American University in Cairo. He has taught language, literature and philosophy courses in Arabic, French, German, and English at UC Berkeley, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of Mannheim, and is currently doing a PhD on the intersections of modern Arabic poetry, mysticism and continental philosophy at UC Berkeley’s department of comparative literature. He lives in Oakland, CA.
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