Naguib Mahfouz Medal For Literature Announced

Date: 2010-02-08

 Cairo, 11 December2009            Contact:Nabila Akl 2797-6896

Khalil Sweileh

Awarded the NaguibMahfouz Medal for Literature

Rasheed El-Enany

Delivers the NaguibMahfouz Memorial Lecture

The American University in CairoPress announced today the award of the 2009 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literatureto the Syrian writer Khalil Sweileh for his novel Warraq al-hubb (The Scribe of Love).The translation of the novel is scheduled to be published in 2010 by theAmerican University in Cairo Press, simultaneously in Cairo, New York, andLondon.

Presented by David Arnold, President ofthe American University in Cairo, the award was decided unanimously by themembers of the Award Committee: Samia Mehrez, Abdel Moneim Tallima, Hoda Wasfy,Fakhri Saleh, Gaber Asfour, Mohamed Berrada, and Mark Linz, the Director of theAUC Press, which sponsors the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. The awardceremony at AUC’s Oriental Hall was attended by many writers and otherdistinguished personalities of Egyptian cultural life, including H.E. FaroukHosni and members of  the Mahfouzfamily.

In their citation for the award, thejudges described Warraq al-hubb as “a truly intelligent novel,” and went on to say:“We must acknowledge Khalil Sweileh’s startling talent as a storyteller whocommands the art of narrative and intertextuality without ever losing sight ofthe core of his text. . . . This witty novel deconstructs the very act ofwriting through deploying and embedding a host of texts with which itintersects and to which it is opposed, thereby insisting that writing itself isalways an act of re-writing, a creative repetition of and addition to thenever-ending process of writing.”

The award of the Naguib MahfouzMedal for Literature this year followed the annual Naguib Mahfouz MemorialLecture, given by the distinguished Egyptian scholar and critic RasheedEl-Enany, who spoke on the subject of “Arab Intellectuals and the West.”

At the award ceremony, the AUC Pressalso announced the publication of the English editions of two novels by NaguibMahfouz, The Mirage (translated by Roger Allen) and Before the Throne (translated by RaymondStock).

The AUC Press, which established theNaguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 1996, has been the primary publisher ofNaguib Mahfouz’s English-language editions for more than twenty years, and hasalso been responsible for the publication of some 500 foreign-language editionsof the Nobel laureate’s works in 40 languages around the world since the authorwon the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. With up to 100 new publicationsannually and more than 1,000 titles in print, the AUC Press is recognized asthe region’s leading English-language publisher.