Ghitani wins Zayed literature prize
Alison McMeans
Last Updated: February 08. 2009 12:34AM UAE / February 7. 2009 8:34PM GMT ABU DHABI // The Egyptian writer Jamal al Ghitani has been announced as the winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards prize for literature.
The author won for Dafater Al -Tadween: Ren – the sixth volume of a series that chronicles his travels from the Pyramid Plateau to the southern parts of Egypt.
The awards council said that the work “manifests the intersection of the spiritual and carnal, the artistic and intellectual, exceeding the boundaries of time and history”.
Mr al Ghitani has been editor-in-chief of the Akhbar Al Adab newspaper since 1992. Born in Egypt in 1945, he studied carpet design at the Abbasiya School in Cairo.
Before becoming a war correspondent, he was arrested and held in a prison camp for six months between 1966 and 1967 for his critical views of President Nasser. He is one of the founders of Gallery 68, the renowned literary magazine, and has been the recipient of many international literary honours.
“The Sheikh Zayed Book Award winners this year reflect some of the most exciting and, in some cases, challenging cultural works written in Arabic today,” said Rashed al Oraimi, secretary general of the awards. The literature award is only one of nine categories, which include translation, young author, children’s literature and cultural personality of the year.
This year the award committee reviewed 621 works from 26 countries to select the nine winners, who will be announced from now until the beginning of March. Each winner receives Dh750,000, with the exception of the Cultural Personality of the Year, who receives Dh1 million. The independent cultural awards were set up with the support of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage. They were established in the memory of Sheikh Zayed, the founding President of the UAE, and reward innovation in knowledge, arts and humanities.
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
