August Issue of WWB: Andre Naffis on literary competition in the UAE

Who can resist an article entitled Poets, Eunuchs and Pricks? A mordant commentary on the biggerbetterfastermore ethos of the Emirates, Andre Naffis' essay looks at the way in which literary prestige has got mixed up in the rapidly developing skyline, with a planned statue celebrating al-Hakawati (the storyteller).

In a characteristically outlandish twist, the Sheikhs have now decided to set their mores on sexuality down in stone by commissioning a gargantuan eunuch—which is to lord over Dubai’s Zabeel Park, fifty hectares smack in the middle of what is now some of the world’s most valuable real estate. At over one hundred and fifty feet, the statue of Al-Hakawati “the storyteller” would relegate Rhodes’ Colossus to an also-ran.

In Abu Dhabi on the other hand, it's all about live entertainment,

in what is arguably a ploy by Abu Dhabi’s reigning Nahyan clan to style themselves after the Medicis and establish their city as the artistic counterweight to Dubai’s financial hub. The audiovisual jewel in their tiara is “The Prince of Poets”—a contest held at the Al Raha Beach Theatre on the outskirts of the island emirate. Run along the lines of “American Idol,” thousands of applications are processed until a select thirty-five poets compete in the broadcasts which unfold over the course of ten weeks.

As for the Medicis, this patronage of art has inspired some heated exchanges in Arab literary community and blogosphere, and casts a revealing light on the sociocultural makeup of the Emirates.

Take the first season when there were claims that the judges, hoping to foster a sense of national pride, awarded first prize to the Emarati Maatouk, while the far more popular Palestinian Barghouti came in fifth. Barghouti, whose father, Mourid is the author of I Saw Ramallah, could no doubt take solace in the not inconsiderable cheque ($27,000) and in that he walked away with that much sought-after accolade, the modern poet’s wreath, which he was accorded when his poem “Jerusalem” was immortalized with a cell-phone ring-tone. Nevertheless, the mini-scandal drew attention to the deep seated divisions between local and foreign Arabs. Palestinians and other Arabs constitute a second tier to privileged Emaratis.

What does this all amount to for poetry? Naffis links the ambitious scale and political capital of both projects to

the deep-seated ambivalence the Arab world displays when the ‘word’ intermingles with Islam’s current conservatism. Poetry is often dubbed sihr halal, “legal magic,” which, aside from the peculiar phrasing—one that would be unthinkable in other contexts as the average Arab has an understanding of magic not too dissimilar from that of Salem’s witch-hunters circa1692—points to a marked difference between East and West.

Yet

Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani and Adonis, that perennial Nobel contender, were and have been known to fill stadiums with record audiences.

What Naffis doesn't add is that all three poets have also been thorns in the side of governments as well as popular figures. When state-sanctioned, can poetry continue to be the Arab world's rock and roll?

Etisalat Award for Arab Children's Literature

Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi, daughter of the ruler of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, is pretty serious about upping the game of Arabic children's literature: in 2007 she founded her own publishing house, Kalimat (which has a fun interactive website in Arabic and English), and the Arab Children’s Book Publishers Forum (currently exhibiting at Book Expo America), a trade organization which now boasts 60 members. This year, it's a prize in conjunction with telecommunications Etisalat, worth one million dirhams ($270, 000) to be split between the publisher, author and/or illustrator. The 2009 winner is expected to be announced at the Sharjah World Book Fair, scheduled for November this year.

Meet Denys Johnson-Davies, Arabic translator extraordinaire

The Directors of Arabia Books and Haus Publishing invite you to celebrate
Denys Johnson-Davies's
Memories in Translation: A Life Between the Lines of Arabic Literature

at the
bookHaus
70 Cadogan Place, London SW1X
on Friday, 29 May 2009, at 6.30pm

Denys Johnson-Davies will be in conversation with
Professor Bruce Ingham (Emeritus Professor of Arabic Dialect Studies, SOAS)

Described by Edward Said as ‘the leading Arabic-English translator of our time’, Denys Johnson-Davies has more than 30 volumes to his name, in a career spanning six decades. He has written about his life and work in Memories in Translation: A Life Between the Lines of Arabic Literature, a fascinating insight into his life as a translator of and contributor to literature from the Middle East. For his services to Arabic literature Denys Johnson-Davies was the first recipient of the coveted Sheikh Zayed Book Award Cultural Personality of the Year in 2007, awarded for ‘significant contributions to Arabic culture’.

During the Second World War he moved to Cairo, where he started befriending and translating Egyptian authors, amongst them the Nobel laureate novelist Naguib Mahfouz, the master short story writer Yusuf Idris and the playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim. He also promoted the Syrian writer Zakaria Tamir, the late Tayeb Salih from Sudan and the greatly missed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In the 1970s Heinemann invited Denys Johnson-Davies to be the Consultant for an Arab Author series. In subsequent decades his works were published by Quartet and the American University in Cairo Press. Arabia Books is proud to publish his latest collection of short stories from the United Arab Emirates.

In a Fertile Desert: Modern Writing from the United Arab Emirates, is the first volume of short stories to emerge from this commercially and culturally vibrant centre of the Arab world. Long before the riches of oil, this region was harsh, and the stories in this collection sum up the struggles of those early days; and the difficulties and dangers of bringing together the past and future of the UAE.

To RSVP for the event please email shop [at] hauspublishing.com

More from Abu Dhabi: From Arabic to Bulgarian

A really detailed blog post from Chad Post of Three Percent, who is clearly committed to discovering and covering the Abu Dhabi book fair. This one's about translations into and out of Arabic, and it's so interesting that I'm going to quote a whole chunk:

Literature Across Frontiers represents approximately twenty cultural organizations from across Europe that provide translation subsidies to publishers interested in translating their works. In addition, these organizations frequently produce pamphlets and other promotional materials to spread the word about their literature. Alexandra Buchler of LAF came to the fair to make more Arab publishers aware of these programs in the hope that there will be an increase in translations into Arabic from the “smaller languages” of Europe, such as Catalan, Finnish, or Latvian. Her overall goal is to help create networks between European publishers and Arabic ones, in hopes of developing relationships that lead to greater cultural exchanges.

Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of Finnish to Arabic translators out there (for example–this is true with a ton of countries), so LAF is also trying to create partnerships to support the development and training of translators.

Finally, Next Page is also at the fair to spread the word about “Encounters,” a program of the foundation to encourage translation and exchange between Arabic and the languages of Eastern Europe. Through this program they hope to establish better relationships between publishers in the two regions and supply translation subsidies to publishers of both areas. (A very logical and great complement to what LAF is doing.)

In addition to subsidies, Next Page produces some fantastically informative reports. Ina Doublekova gave me a copy of a recent study on “Translations of Books from Arabic in Four East European Countries after 1989,” which is really fascinating. According to the opening summary, over the last decade the average number of titles translated from Arabic into Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, and Serbia, is between 0 and 3 titles per year. (The entire study is available online at http://www.npage.org.) Hopefully thanks to Next Page—and its energetic and brilliant director Yana Genova—this situation will improve greatly over the next few years.

This is exciting stuff, and it would be interesting to track the growth in translated titles along with the growth of refugee and immigrant populations, for example, the influx of Iraqi refugees into Sweden, to see if there is any correlation.

Abu Dhabi Gets Book

Covering the Abu Dhabi book fair, the Khaleej Times notes a common problem - book sales dropping due to other distractions - and hopes that the fair, symbolised by the Arabic Booker, can bring readers back.

Diverting attention of the youth from the TV and computer screens to books may seem difficult but not an impossible goal. After all, this is the land of Scheherazade and the tales of Thousand and One Nights.

They also report that this year's winner Youssef Ziedan used the prize ceremony to promote religious harmony.

Three Percent have a full report on the festivities, the book fair itself reports a first: RAYA are the first literary agency to take a stall at the fair. RAYA have ten Arabic authors under contract, including Khaled Khalifa who was in the running for the Arabic Booker last year with the brilliantly-titled In Praise of Hatred.

Victory for the Devil: Azazel takes Arabic Booker

Described by the Coptic Church as "the Arabic version of The Da Vinci Code" and by its author, Youssef Ziedan, as "a philosophical novel written with blood, sweat and tears," Azazel (Beelzebub) carried off the $50, 000 top award in the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The National has a full report on the prize-giving. Trailing clouds of controversy -- as well as the promise of Dan Brown-style mystery (although the author hotly denies the comparison) -- Beelzebub sounds like it could be a huge hit once the English translation is released. According to Gulf News, Ziedan is now "hopeful that the book will earn him a Nobel prize for literature next year," which sounds less astonishing when you realise that Azazel is Ziedan's fifty-fourth book, a crowning achievement bringing together his academic work on Islamic philosophy and history of medicine, as well as his work as the Director of the Manuscript Centre at the Library of Alexandria. He has certainly galvanised attention to Arabic literature, with the prize even rating a mention in the New Yorker books blog.

Arabic Booker (Almost) Announced...

And if the Abu Dhabi book fair's coming up, then so is the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, aka the "Arabic Booker," which will shower its bounty - including English translation paid for by Sigrid Rausing, owner of Granta - at the fest. Both The National and the LA Times are spinning the award's potential for controversy: the LA Times focuses on the religious taboos broken by Ibrahim Nasrallah and by Yousuf Zeydan's Beelzebub. Ed Lake at the National picks up on two books that are about the vexed role of the translator/interpreter, suggesting that:

It would be interesting to see Fawaz Haddad’s entry, The Unfaithful Translator, take the prize, if only to see what the Granta people make of it. The Syrian author tells the tale of an interpreter whose unconventional views on the role of free translation in creativity and culture see him condemned for betrayal.

He also picks up on:

the one woman on the list, Inaam Kachachi, [who] presents what may be the timeliest offering. The American Granddaughter shows the ravages of modern Iraq through the eyes of an American-Iraqi woman. She returns to her home country in the compromised role of US Army interpreter; how else could that old feminist saw “the personal is political” be made to pack a more dramatic punch?

Dubai: A New Age for Translation?

One last post from Dubai, I swear: the festival has inspired a lot of coverage, with some particularly interesting discussions about translation -- both between languages, and between cultures, its rewards and difficulties.

Over at Global Voices, Ayesha Saldanha (who notices our coverage of Dubai on the blog -- thanks Ayesha!) has a great round-up of posts detailing the several cultural festivals happening in the Gulf region, including book fairs in Abu Dhabi and one in Riyadh, which featured what blogger Ruhsa calls

A noteworthy attempt [by] the Commission PR booth at the Riyadh Book Fair. […] It features examples of items that they have confiscated, photos of items found in raids and also the reasons WHY they are banned. There were also several Commission members explaining things at this fairly popular booth!

That's the Commission of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, with whom the Ministry of Culture has to reach a compromise - including female stallholders being required to leave on days when men are allowed into the fair - to allow the fair to go ahead.

Ruhsa feels that the Commission's stall is a move towards a more transparent process of negotiation between tradition and modernity. In The Khaleej Times, there's a cracking interview with Egyptian poet, and president of Nile Culture TV, Gamal Al Shaer that discusses how these issues played out in Dubai. He commented that

Dubai is not another Singapore. It is an ambitious Arab city that builds skyscrapers, yet adheres to the traditional tent, coffee and falcons; a combination of originality and contemporariness,

a combination that also informed the poetry festival, which included classic recitations in a variety of venues (including malls) as well as more contemporary readings.

Al Shaer also shared a particular insight derived from the difficulties of presenting poetry in translation at live events, and connecting Dubai's ventures into literary culture and transcultural literature to a rich Islamic tradition of translation and cultural interchange.

“It is rather a translation of spirit rather than passionless words,” he said, hoping that the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation would adopt a regional translation project in line with the one implemented in the
 Abbasid age.

Breytenbach on Darwish

South African writer and anti-apartheid activist talks to The National about his friendship with Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. It's revealing, perceptive and moving. Breytenbach

tells a story of a holiday the pair once took in Ramallah. They were put out to find that they were expected to have an audience with Yasser Arafat. “We were not interested in that,” says Breytenbach. “We didn’t want to be recuperated… And also we couldn’t see what poetry we would be talking about when we talked to Arafat.” But despite his unwillingness, circumstances seem to have forced Darwish to give in. “Very early one morning in the hotel we were staying in, he came, Mahmoud came and talked to us and said: ‘I couldn’t get out of it. I promised him…’ So he was doing a little bit of carrying and fetching… He was not a totally cut-off rebel.”

Indeed, one of the facets of Darwish that Breytenbach singles out for special praise is the way in which the man and the monument are brought into an uneasy dialogue in the work. “He had this hard gift,” says Breytenbach, “of somehow being both private and very public in the same poem, to the extent that I think one can really see the poet at work, struggling with his own private demons... At the same time I don’t think he ever extrapolated from there. He’s not trying to imagine that whatever was ailing him was kind of an incarnation or a representation emblematic of the larger cause – or the other way around, for that matter.”

I also loved this article, by Ed Lake, for coining the word "bonhomous" to describe the atmosphere at the Dubai festival, where he was speaking to Breytenbach.

Dubai, cont.: Celebration vs. Censorship

The first Gulf literary festival is generating lots of column inches in English-language press from the UK, North America and the Arab world; in the former countries, the emphasis is on censorship (Globe and Mail), women and clichéd images of Arabic literature (it's about camels!): The Independent get all three into the headline of their coverage. In the latter, the emphasis is on the diversity of Arab writers, the challenges of translation (Gulf News) and poetry as a shared culture (Gulf News). The Saudi Gazette highlights this last with a headline that draws attention to the wonderful title of the poetry festival: "A Thousand Poets, One Language."

Abdullah Kader, an acclaimed writer, moderated the evening that witnessed a remarkable turnout of audiences.
Kader said: “Poetry does not always command wide attention.
However, Dubai has given poetry a huge window of opportunity to be experienced in all languages, demonstrating the Emirate’s love for culture and its firm commitment to evoke, preserve and evolve the genre as a creative form of expression.”

More from Dubai: Is Censorship an Elephant?

That's Claire Armistead's opinion, writing in the Guardian (which, hmm, generated this whole debate in the first place when it hosted Geraldine Bedell's blog without checking the facts) on Monday. She attended the "hastily arranged censorship debate" convened by the festival. Speakers included Margaret Atwood (via videolink), Ibrahim Nasrallah, Andrei Kurkov, Rachel Billington, PEN secretary Eugene Schoulgin, Rajaa al-Sanea and festival host Mohammed al-Murr.

What appears to have emerged from the debate is that censorship operates on a spectrum across all nations, including those that pride themselves on their openness and multiculturalism, such as Canada, but it carries greater attendant risks - imprisonment, torture, exile - in some countries than others. Andrei Kurkov, from the Ukraine, also alluded to the commercial potential of a whiff of censorship, criticising publishers for seeking out censorship as a "badge."

Perhaps most of interest -- and it's unclear how or whether this relates to the media spotlight on the emirates created by Bedell's blog, or to the presence of the international festival -- is something Armistead reports towards the beginning of her article. After the case of three journalists who were jailed for defamation over something they had written on the internet

Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the emir of Dubai who is also its vice-president and prime minister, has since decreed that no journalist should receive a prison sentence for press-related offences, and the journalists have all been released from jail.

Women Writing from the Arab World: Dubai panel

Novelist and blogger Liz Fenwick reports from Dubai on a panel discussion featuring Mansoura Ez Eldin, Haifa Bitar, Sahar el-Mougy and Rajaa al-Sanea with Hani Nakshabandi that discussed the questions: “What are the implications of being a writer for Arab women? Can one speak of women’s literature as opposed to men’s literature?” The report is preoccupied with Fenwick's own reactions, but there are some real zingers that made me wish I'd been there to hear these four very different writers talk about their process. Haifa Bitar described her struggles with the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria, especially after her divorce, as:

being in a small room like a cage and they only way to turn the fear (the cage) into endless space was to write. She also said that writing for her was like having a photocopier for what was in her mind.

Souk it To Me: Dubai festival takes poetry to the malls

The Saudi Gazette reports that as part of the festival, there are poetry contests being held in Dubai's world-famous malls, bringing together an Arabic poetry tradition and the newer mode of the poetry slam/Pop Idol.

The festival aims to revive the ancient poetic tradition of the historic Souk Okaz dating back to 500 BC, where literary contests and poetry recitations were held by prominent Arab poets in the pre-Islamic era, and which was revived in Taif, Saudi Arabia, last year. Similarly, the Dubai festival “will act as a forum for poets from around the world, to remove the barriers of borders and speak the language of poetry,” Al-Shaali said. As the nature of ancient souks has changed, so will the rules of the game of contemporary souk literary contests. The festival organization committee has planned to transport this tradition to the modern-day souk – the shopping malls – and host short plays and story recitations reflecting the contemporary human spirit in the poetic tradition.

And it's pretty hardcore:

This year’s event features prominent contemporary Arab poets like Saudi Prince Badr Bin Abdul Mohsin, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Sheikh Ahmed Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum from the UAE, and Saudi scholar Dr. Aayid Al-Qarni, Abdulrahman Rafi from Bahrain, Farouk Juwaydah and Ahmad Hijazi from Egypt, Hussein Darwish from Syria, Mahmoud Abdulghani from Morocco, and Abdu Wazin from Lebanon, and more.
Poets from other parts of the world include Mathew Sweeney from England, Raphael Urweider from Switzerland, Patrizia Cavalli from Italy, Enrique Moya from Venezuela, and Joachim Sartorius and Wolfgang Kubin from Germany. The poetic talent of the sub-continent will be represented by Kamal Vora, Ranjit Hoskote and Imtiaz Dharker from India, and Saba Ekram from Pakistan.

Has anyone been to one of these events? What was it like? Reports in ghazal form please :)

"I am a translator. I am a prisoner of your thoughts."

Emily Meredith at the Kaleej Times reports Ibrahim al-Koni's insights into the fraught process of translation from Arabic (via Russian, English, French and back to Arabic in one particularly mind-boggling instance) from the International Festival of Literature in Dubai.

Al-Koni offers a fascinating account of his work with German translator Hartmut Fahndrich,

a scholar whose work originally focused on translating medieval Arabic medical texts rather than modern literature, for 15 years now. The two collaborate on translations, particularly when Fahndrich has doubts about what the text conveys.

“When Fahndrich has his doubts regarding a sentence, we must meet,” Al Koni said. “Many translators are not as conscientious, nor do they have the luxury of a well-established relationship with the author.”

“You as an author can write whatever you want,” he reminisced about Fahndrich telling him, “But I am a translator. I am a prisoner of your thoughts.”

Thanks to Literary Saloon for tipping us off to this article.

Arabic Literature & the Internet: Debate opens Dubai festival

Writing in Gulf News, Abbas al Lawati reports from the Dubai literary festival on two sides to a debate about how the internet has affected Arabic literature:

It is often argued that the advent of the internet led to an evolution in Arabic literature that is unprecedented.

While some argue that the internet weakens the Arabic language, others say that it has enabled Arabic literature to reach an audience much larger and farther than ever.

The panel members at the debate included Samuel Shimon, who commented that:

"Arabic writing was isolated and geographically restricted until the internet came along. Now an Arabic writer in Abu Dhabi can have an audience from Casablanca to Australia," said Shimon, who is also the founder of the Banipal online magazine on Arabic literature.

He said that he was also introduced to many new Arabic writers courtesy of the internet.

"We can actually call it Arabic literature now because it can finally reach all parts of the Arab world," he said.

The article concludes in favour of the internet's global reach, with an interesting point about its liberalising effect not only on readers who can now access books from around the world, but also on writers.

The writers said the internet helped Arabic writing free itself from political and social restrictions that had plagued pre-internet era Arabic writing, saying it was a platform for free thought and the unrestricted exchange of ideas.

They also credited the internet with introducing Arab authors to the non-Arab world and helping globalise Arabic writing.

It was also argued that the internet had even helped promote gender equality.

"We all know that women aren't afforded many opportunities in Saudi Arabia. The internet has helped introduce the Saudi literary scene to more women, who now constitute 60 per cent of Saudi writers thanks to the internet, as opposed to the previous 40 per cent. They can become writers sitting at home now," said Turki Al Dakhil.

Atwood/Bedell/Dubai/controversy?

Margaret Atwood tells readers of the Guardian that her "head is spinning" in light of new details concerning the "banning" of Geraldine Bedell's book from the Emirates Book Festival. Having discovered that the story had been blown out of proportion, Atwood has the good grace to make fun of her own reactions in the role of

Anti-Censorship Woman! I nipped into the nearest phone booth, hopped into my cape and coiled my magic lasso, and swiftly cancelled my own appearance; because, as a vice-president of International PEN, I could not give my August Seal of Elderly Writer Approval to such a venue.

While the status of The Gulf Between Us in the Gulf remains unclear, Atwood makes some savvy points about the nature of book festivals and authors' egos, concluding -- cape aloft -- with the hope that the incident will provide a forum for serious debate:

The positive effect of this fracas is that the door has now been opened for a discussion of such matters. PEN will send its international secretary, Eugene Schoulgin, to initiate such a discussion; there is talk of a panel. I am considering my options. Should I - for instance - appear at the festival on video screen? Or are there yet more twists and turns to this story?

Books are seriously "banned" and "censored" around the world, and people have been imprisoned, murdered and executed for what they've written. A loose use of these terms is not helpful.

Bedell Banned in Dubai

Guardian journalist and novelist Geraldine Bedell wrote in the Guardian Books blog yesterday that her forthcoming novel The Gulf Between Us has been banned from the Dubai book fair, where she had hoped to launch it. Bedell comments:

It seemed a perfect fit. Mine is the only novel I know of in English (but I can't think there are many in Arabic, either) set in a Gulf emirate. Most of the action takes place in a small fictional state called Hawar, which means either "little camel" or "dispute" in Arabic.

This "hawar", coming close on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, will undoubtedly draw attention to the novel. Margaret Atwood has withdrawn from the festival in protest against the censorship of Bedell's novel. Other novelists are considering their invitations, including children's writers Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child (perhaps as much at the suggestion from the fair to Bedell's publishers Penguin that they consider launching a children's book [read: harmless] instead -- oblivious to the excellent, contentious and controversial children's and YA fiction currently being published). As the festival is being funded by the Emirates Airline Foundation, a boycott of Arsenal might also be considered.

Speaking to the Guardian today, Jonathan Heawood, director of English PEN, said:

Ideally a festival like this should be a chance for authors from all cultures and different backgrounds to come together, share work and exchange experiences. A literary festival should be about cultural exchange, and clearly this one isn't.

Bedell suggests that the "comically long list" of reasons for banning the novel from the fair omit - and in fact disguise - the decision-makers' homophobia (the novel features a gay sheikh). The author of Saudi-set Girls of Riyadh faced a backlash for her portrayal of the sexual double standards among the "velvet class," including a minor character who is a lesbian. The author of Al Akharoun, a Saudi novel with a lesbian protagonist, has to use a pseudonym. So Bedell's guess has some precedents in the region to support it. Al Akharoun was published in Arabic by Dar al Saqi, who also publish Hani Naskshabandi, a Saudi journalist and novelist currently living in Dubai.

I haven't read The Gulf Between Us, but I'd be curious as to how it compares in its worldview and style to the fiction covered by Laila Mohammed Saleh's Women Writers of the Islands and Arabian Gulf, and to the fiction and non-fiction writing being fostered in UAE by the al-Owais foundation, most of which is not available in English translation. Anyone familiar with writing from UAE who can offer an insight?

Sheikh Zayed Book Awards: Find Out More

From Atlas user KA:

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award’s renovated website was launched last week in its Arabic and English versions. The website has been renovated in response to the growing interest in Sheikh Zayed Book Award during the past two years on both regional and international levels. The award "is presented every year to outstanding Arab writers, intellectuals, publishers as well as young talent whose writings and translations of humanities have scholarly and objectively enriched Arab cultural, literary and social life.
The award was established under the patronage and support of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage." Previous winners include Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni (2008). The judging process for the 2009 nominations is currently in progress. The winners will be announced early February while the Award Ceremony will be held during Abu Dhabi International Book Award (17-22 February 2009).
New sections were added to the website of the Award which include a Calendar that lists the cultural and literary events -- including several on translation and multilingual publishing -- around the world that the Award has hosted and participated in. “The Award is making use of technology to reach out for its audience in the region and the rest of the world. The new website opens a channel for the Award to communicate and interact with the reader, the scholar, the literary and the public in the easiest and simplest way possible” the Secretary General of the Award, Mr. Rashed Al Oraimi, commented.