Doha: Katara Cultural Village unveiled Tuesday the shortlisted best novel categories that are competing in the 12th Prize for Arabic Fiction.
According to Qatar News Agency, the list includes published and unpublished novels, young adult novels, history, as well as critical studies with names alphabetically being set. Each list showcases 18 competing works for this prize, as novelists from ten countries are competing in published and unpublished novels, four of them from Egypt, with Syria and Palestine contesting with three novels for each nation.
In addition, there are two competing novels from Algeria and one novel from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia. Published novels included novelists from nine countries, eight novels from Egypt and two from Algeria and Lebanon, alongside one novel nominated from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan.
Thus, critical studies included literary critics from nine countries, among them eight Arab nations and one African nation. Morocco topped the list with eight literary studies, three from Egypt and one study from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, Mauritania, and Guinea.
As for young adult novels, there are novelists from six Arab nations, with Algerian novelists leading the shortlist with six of the 18 nominees, while Egypt and Morocco each had four novels showcased. Jordan had two novels, while Yemen and Tunisia each had one. The historical novels included 18 from eight countries, with seven from Egypt, four from Algeria, two from Morocco, and one each from Oman, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, and Tunisia.
The prize is poised to declare the nine-title shortlist for the five categories in August, while the Qatari novel will be recalibrated to announce the winner, along with the remaining categories throughout the events of this iteration. This current iteration has broken the record in history since its inception in 2014, with 2,610 participants, thereby outweighing the previous iteration in 2021, which reached 2,321.
The inaugural iteration of this prize was launched in 2015, after Katara declared it as a literary platform in early 2014. The closing ceremony of winning works in that inaugural iteration recorded a broad Arab presence, recognizing novelists both in published and unpublished novels, ushering in a new phase of one of the significant literary prizes that strengthens Arab narrative literature and its translation worldwide.