Yesterday, Sunday, the Egyptian poet and academic Fatima Qandil won the 25th edition of the Naguib Mahfouz Prize for literature, which is awarded annually by the American University in Cairo Press.
Fatima Qandil won the prize, established in 1996 and awarded every year on the birthday of the Nobel Prize-winning writer for literature, for her novel “Empty Cage”, published by Khan Book publishing house.
After receiving the award at the old American University headquarters in Tahrir Square, he said: ‘It is fortunate for me, I think, that I belong to this generation that has been lucky enough to be waiting for a new book by Naguib Mahfouz. He is fortunate that I received these fresh books to change the paths of my life.”
She added: “I would receive them as successive letters written just for me. I would be alone with them and put lines and margins around her favorite sayings until they became an intimate part of my soul.”
And he went on to say: “If there is one lesson among the many lessons I learned from Naguib Mahfouz that I can talk about now, it is to see a person as he is, not as he should be, to see him in his confusion, weakness and desire for the impossible.”
The value of the prize is $5,000, plus a silver medal stamped with an image of Naguib Mahfouz, with the book translated into English and published in a series of publications by the American University in Cairo Publishing House, which specializes in novels, under the name of “Hobo”.
President of the American University in Cairo, Ahmed Dallal, said at the awards ceremony, “Naguib Mahfouz’s creativity has made him an undisputed reference for the Arab novel, and has carved out for the Arab novel its place in the cultural arena.” It’s not easy to talk about him and his literary legacy in a few lines.”
He added, “While we are trying to preserve this legacy, we are doing so by providing opportunities for Arab youth, as he wanted, to showcase, develop and develop his literary talents to become a renewed embodiment of what Naguib Mahfouz represents in our collective memory and the its profound impact on contemporary Arabic literature.”
The jury for this session, chaired by Sherine Abul Naga, professor of English and comparative literature at Cairo University, received more than 150 novels from various Arab countries.
