When the Egyptian writer and journalist Chadi Louis (or Shady Lewis) learned on January 8 that he had won a literary prize for the best novel of the year, he said he was grateful and thanked everyone who congratulated him on this success. But on his facebook accounthe added :
“I will keep this price for one night only. Then, in the morning, I will write to the Committee to announce my renunciation of this distinction, in the material and moral sense.
It’s about prix Sawiristhe country’s most prominent literary award, along with 150,000 Egyptian pounds, which equates to almost 5,000 euros, a considerable sum in Egypt, according to Qatari website Al-Araby Al-Jadid.
The writer was awarded for his novel A Brief History of Creation and East Cairo, published last year in Arabic. It is the follow-up to his two previous works, which all tell of the condition of disadvantaged families, in this case Copts, in contemporary Egypt, marked by the violence of structures of domination, in particular the Church, explains the lebanese site Raseef22.
