New Arabic short story prize meets with cautious welcome

Suspicion clings to Arabic literary prizes, particularly the newest ones. As soft power concentrates more and more in Gulf nations, often in the form of artistic disbursements, writers have to ask: what sort of literature is being fostered? Which agendas is it supporting? Some prizes have elicited instant condemnations, others a whirl of gossip.

But when the new AlMultaqa prize was announced in December, there was cautious enthusiasm. The prize, which has begun accepting entries as 2016 starts, is based in Kuwait, a partnership between a cultural circle led by Kuwaiti writerTaleb Alrefai and the American University in Kuwait. The $20,000 (£13,300) prize is for short stories, a genre that has been neglected in the scramble for global literary influence.

“The prize is a valuable addition to the world of Arab literary awards,” Jordanian short story writer Hisham Bustani said. He was especially pleased that the prize “broke free from the usual novel-cheering”.

Most new prizes have been for novels, as is the case with the new Qatari-sponsored Katara prize for the Arabic novel, which handed out its prizes from a pool of $650,000 this May to 10 winners and runners-up. There is also the high-profile International prize for Arabic fiction (IPAF), funded out of the Emirates; and the small but prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal, based in Egypt.

Young Kuwaiti performance poet Nada Faris is a member of AlMultaqa’s board of trustees. She said the prize made the decision to focus on short stories “because the art is dying. Short story writers in the panel expressed their grievances by saying that there are few to no publishers who actively seek collections of short stories in Arabic.”

Prize-watchers also hoped this new award might avoid the mistakes made by so many other Arabic literary prizes. “Let’s hope this prize will fortify itself against personal connections, geographical quotas, gender bias and the whims of ‘influential’ figures: the plague of the Arab literary scene,” Bustani said.

Qatar’s Katara mega-prize met with instant hostility when it launched, with some suggestions in the Egyptian press that it was a “Qatari bribe”, a “crime against Egypt”, or even that accepting it might be treason. Several good novelists received monetary awards, including Egyptian Ibrahim Abdelmeguid, but the lack of transparency and somewhat chaotic processes didn’t help the prize’s credibility.

Kuwait does have its own censorship problems. In 2014, government censors prevented Kuwaiti novelist Abdullah Al Busais’s Zakriyat Dalla (Stray Memories) from entering the country, the same year Kuwait instigated behind-the-curtains dealings that marred the Cairo book fair awards.Censorship further undercuts a state-sponsored prize’s role in cultural promotion. In Qatar, the ongoing imprisonment of poet Mohammed al-Ajami is particularly troubling. Al-Ajami’s 15-year prison term was the reason celebrated translator Humphrey Davies gave for withdrawing from a conference that accompanied the launch of Qatar’s giant new translation award.

But the AlMultaqa prize signals its independence with a diverse and well-known advisory board and board of trustees that includes writers, publishers, translators, and academics, including Kuwait’s most celebrated living writer,Ismail Fahd Ismail; former Moroccan minister of culture and novelist Mohammed Achaari; British journalist and translator Jonathan Wright; and Japanese academic Kaoru Yamamoto.