Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation 2024 shortlist announced.

The Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation 2024 shortlist was announced on Monday, December 2, 2024.

The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize is an annual award for published translations from Arabic of full-length works of imaginative and creative writing of literary merit and general interest worth £3,000. Established in 2006 by Banipal Magazine and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, the prize is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of his father, a passionate bibliophile.

The 2024 jury comprises translator Raphael Cohen, who chairs alongside The Times Literary Supplement editor and co-founder of the Brixton Review of Books Michael Caines, award-winning literary translator Laura Watkinson, and literary translator and translation consultant Nariman Youssef.

The jury announced the shortlist on Monday from the nineteen entries by fourteen different publishers.

“The six shortlisted works for the 2024 prize comprise three novels, a graphic memoir, a prison memoir and a biographical detective story. This diversity reflects that of this year’s entries, which included three poetry collections, two short story collections and a YA historical novel alongside other novels,” the jury said in their report.

The following writers of African descent were featured this year;

• Edo’s Souls, Stella Gaitano, translated by Sawad Hussain (Dedalus, 2023) – Judge Nariman Youssef praised the translation as “engaging and empathetic”, remarking that Hussain’s translation presents “a plausible and dynamic world”.
• Rotten Evidence, Ahmed Naji, translated by Katharine Halls (McSweeney’s, 2023) – Judge Laura Watkinson commented, “This is a book and a world that I became absorbed in, both because of the content and the superb translation.”
• Traces of Enayat, Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger (And Other Stories, 2023) – Judge Michael Caines said, “The pursuit of an elusive biographical subject here becomes interwoven with the history of Cairo itself – and so the pursuit of Enayat, with all its serendipitous discoveries and mystifying dead ends, becomes the story of recovering a lost world, too. This is an engrossing and necessary feat of feminist detective work.”

The winner of the 2024 prize will be announced on January 8, 2025.

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