This week, our editors are introducing the most exciting literary voices with prize winners, debut novels, and familiar favourites. From El Salvador, a millennial writer wins the prestigious Mario Monteforte Toledo Award for a short story critical of the Salvadoran regime; from the Francophone, the latest winner of the unconventional Sade Prize is announced; and from Palestine, a lament as beloved poet Mahmoud Darwish is missed for the Nobel.
Katarina Gadze, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Belgium
This week, we’re taking a look at some of the eagerly awaited literary events that have been making waves in Belgium. Brussels has recently come across a number of interesting literary events: the closing event of Poetik Bozar, with an evening of reading and performances of Warsan Shire and her translators Radna Fabias (Dutch) and Sika Fakambi (French); the upcoming The wonders of multilingualism #3: to translate or not to translate?; as well as the Writers & Thinkers stage at the Bozar centre, a richly filled series of talks and debates welcoming some of the greatest contemporary voices such as Orhan Pamuk, Rachel Cusk, and Ian Kershaw.
A handy digest of the week’s Belgian literary news would also not be complete without mentioning some well-deserved prize winners. After an initial selection of forty books, the Hors Concours prize has revealed its shortlist with only five novels remaining in the running. As a “prize for publishing without a price,” the Hors Concours honors French-language books of fiction published by independent publishers—giving the rarely awarded authors a chance to access a larger audience in the competitive Francophone publishing landscape. Among the five books still in the running for the prize is Belgian writer Veronika Mabardi’s story Sauvage est celui qui se sauve, published this January by Esperluète. Other titles include: Le bord du monde est vertical by Simon Parcot (Le mot et le reste), L’arbre de colère by Guillaume Aubin (La contre-allée), Histoire navrante de la mission Mouc-Marc by Frédéric Sounac (Anacharsis), and Il n’y a pas d’arc-en-ciel au paradis by Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry (Hélice Hélas). The announcement of the winning novel, as well as the honorable mention, will be made on November 28.
In other news, Charlotte Bourlard has won the 2022 Sade Prize for her first novel, L’apparence du vivant. Awarded since 2001, the Sade Prize (Prix Sade) backs genres and literary forms that don’t fit into standard literary models, seeking to move outside the shackles of literature and society. Published by Inculte editions in January 2022, Bourlard’s book tells a curious story, that of a young girl introduced to taxidermy by an old lady with one objective in mind: the realization of an ultimate masterpiece. For SonaLitté, Charlotte Bourlard lent herself to reading an excerpt from her book, and laid bare the details in the interview.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
For the hundred and twenty-second time (since 1901), Palestinians are disappointed—the winner of the Noble Prize for Literature is not a Palestinian!
Rumor has it that Mahmoud Darwish, the iconic Palestinian poet, had been nominated a few times over the past decades, and as “the statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, whether publicly or privately, for fifty years,” we would like to continue to believe that Darwish—amid a few other Palestinian writers—have been nominated at one year or another since 1973.
Putting beliefs and wishful thinking aside, most Palestinians don’t (or prefer not to) know that in 1936, a Palestinian was in fact a nominee: Aziz Domet (1890–1943), who used to spell his name Asis Domet, was nominated for the prize by a certain G. E. Khuri, Professor of the Arabic language at the American University of Beirut. Domet was born in Cairo, but spent most of his life in Jerusalem and Haifa, with lengthy visits to Europe and the Levant countries. He produced no fewer than thirty volumes of poetry, novels, and plays—most of them in mimeographed form. His works were mostly in German, with very few exceptions: one drama in Arabic and several newspaper articles in Hebrew. His plays were usually performed in German as well, with many of them showed on stage in Berlin (where he died).
It’s remarkable how little is known amongst Palestinians about Domet, though reasons for this neglect are fairly evident. Domet was one of the literati who wrote favorably about the Zionist enterprise, differing from almost every Arab writers of the time in Palestine. According to Jacob M. Landau, Domet “was trying to build two cultural bridges—between Arabs and Germans, as well as between Arabs and Jews.” Apparently, it is the latter which threw him in the ash heap of Palestinian history, labeling him as the Zionist Palestinian writer.
The truth is (per archives), Aziz Domet was the first Arab to be nominated; even before Taha Hussein’s first nomination in 1949.
Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America
On October 6, the Salvadorean writer Michelle Recinos (1997) was granted the Mario Monteforte Toledo Award for her short story “Barberos en huelga” (“Barbers on strike”). The jury evaluated the briefness of the story, its memorability, significance, and exceptional use of language. During the awarding ceremony, the author declared that she was satisfied with the prize, but deemed more relevant the opportunity to use her literature as a medium to portray the situation in her home country, El Salvador. Recinos explained that her story narrates how a group of soldiers seizes a fictional city, in which there are no barbers because certain haircuts were outlawed. She stated that the current Salvadorean regime—whose leader is Nayib Bukele—has imprisoned more than fifty thousand people using arbitrary methods. Denise Phé-Punchal, one of the jurors, said that Recinos’ work allows the readers to understand how violence and repression become silently normalized in society.
More than six hundred people from Central America sent their work in this edition of the prize. This event was founded in 1995 by the Guatemalan writer, Mario Monteforte Toledo, using the money received for the National Literature Prize (roughly $780). His objective was to inspire the creation of first novels for young writers. Since then, twenty-one writers from Central America have been awarded with the prize.
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