Zaki Nusseibeh Paris Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi Monday 18th February, 2012 Master LEA- Commerce International

 "Le commerce international d'un bien culturel: le livre arabe"

    International Commerce in a Cultural Object: The Arab Book

         Zaki Nusseibeh - Membre du Conseil d'Administration PSUAD

                                            IPAF Board of Trustees

                                                IPAF as a case study

The awarding of annual literary prizes to writers of merit is an acknowledged international component of any thriving book industry. Without them, authors and their publishing houses receive far less recognition or material reward than they deserve - or need -  to help maintain a healthy publishing industry promoting creative writing in any language. Literary prizes usually seek to achieve at least four indispensible objectives in any successful book industry: i. to offer prestigious recognition to an author, young or established, in appreciation of his/her achievement; ii. to provide a much needed cash bonus to aspiring and established writers;  iii. to promote national sales of the book or collected works of a given author thus recognized, and lastly (and closely related to this in an increasingly globalized economic environment) iv. to encourage the translation of the works of any particular author into foreign languages, thereby promoting his sales in an international market. Publishers are not in the business of publishing books as a pure cultural mission, although some may be there for academic (eg. universities) or cultural-specific (eg. research foundations) purposes. Also authors need to earn a decent living while spending many lonely hours and days creating for us a magical world of images and feelings.

As an introduction, I would like to give you two brief examples of such prizes and their recognized impact on the book industry:

Firstly, the Prix Goncourt is a prize for French literature, given by the Academie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". In addition to its main prize, it awards four other prizes known as: the prix Goncourt du Premier Roman (first novel), prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle (short story), prix Goncourt de la Poésie (poetry) and prix Goncourt de la Biographie (biography). Of course the awarding of a literary prize anywhere in the world can raise much controversy and dispute and this is a good thing for the book trade and for the sales of books. We shall be coming to that later in my discussion of IPAF.  After all, the Goncourt itself was criticized in 1919 for awarding its prize to Marcel Proust!

You may have all heard of Jér?me Ferrari,  a Sorbonne graduate and French writer and translator, born in 1968 in Paris, who won the 2012 Prix Goncourt for his "Le Sermon sur la Chute de Rome". Ferrari, who lived in Corsica and taught philosophy at the Lycée International Alexandre-Dumas in Algeria for several years, is currently professor of philosophy at the French School of Abu Dhabi. He told me at a recent talk at the UAE Writers' Union (where he was made honorary member) that the sales of his book jumped by a multiple of several tens of thousands as a result of his winning this prestigious prize.

The second such prize is the British Man Booker Prize for Fiction, a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success (think of Salman Rushdie) and the prize is today universally acknowledged as of great significance for the book trade.

The selection process for the winner of this prize, taken as a model by the IPAF, commences with the formation of an advisory committee which includes a writer, two publishers, a literary agent, a bookseller, a librarian, and a chairperson appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation. The advisory committee then selects the judging panel, the membership of which changes each year, although on rare occasions a judge may be selected a second time. Judges are selected from amongst leading literary critics, writers, academics and public figures.

It was in association with this prize that the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, popularly known as the "Arabic Booker", was launched in Abu Dhabi in April 2007. Its objective was to address the limited international availability of high quality Arabic fiction, and the initiative was based on a suggestion that a prize modeled on the successful Man Booker Prize would encourage recognition of high quality Arabic fiction, reward Arab writers and lead to increased international readership through translation. 

The idea for the prize germinated in the belief shared by many Arab intellectuals that a trulyindependent international literary award free from national bias or prejudice would be the best way to promote modern Arabic fiction. More concrete proposals emerged during an international meeting which brought together publishers from "East" and "West". The then President of the Union of Arab Publishers and a leading British publishing figure talked of the regrettably low amount of high quality contemporary Arabic fiction being translated into leading Western languages. With the advice of the Booker Prize Foundation in London and funding from the Emirates Foundation in Abu Dhabi, a steering committee of Arab literary experts, publishers and journalists was established to advise on the set-up and structure of the prize.

The Abu Dhabi government, initially through the Emirates Foundation, and today through its Tourism and Cultural Authority (TCA), adopted the prize as one that falls within its broad cultural strategy for building a society based on knowledge both in the UAE and the wider Arab world.

The fact that Arabic fiction, and the publishing industry behind it, needs as much help as it can get is an acknowledged reality in the Arab world. As a sad testimony to the actual state of human development in the region, a series of reports were commissioned by the United Nations Human Development Programme in 2000 as a response to a sense of urgency among Arab thinkers and academics who were concerned about the dismal state of affairs in Arab countries at the start of the new millennium, and to provide them with a platform to focus on the challenges and opportunities for human development in the region. Those reports were published between the years 2002 and 2009 and found severe shortages in a number of areas accounting for shortfalls in the area of human development in the Arab world. Chief among the development deficits they identified holding the region’s progress back were those in the areas of knowledge, women’s empowerment, and freedom.

A more specific report by the Arab Human Development Report published in 2003 surveyed the status of knowledge in the Arab region and found it severely wanting. The quality of education had deteriorated severely; Arab illiteracy rates were still very high, and millions of children had no schooling at all. A knowledge-based society is one where knowledge diffusion, production and application become the organizing principle in all aspects of human activity. Yet key knowledge dissemination processes in Arab countries face serious impediments. As an example, only 4.4 translated books per million people were published in the first 5 years of the 1980s in the whole Arab world while the corresponding rate in Spain alone was 920 books.

The report specifically singled out literary production in the Arab world as an area facing severe challenges.  These include the limited number of readers in the region, clearly reflected in the small numbers of books published there, which does not exceed 1.1% of world production, although the Arabs constitute 5% of its population. The report found that the production of literary and artistic books in particular is lower in Arab countries than the general level, and that the total production of such books in 1996, as an example, did not exceed 1,945 books.

A survey of the Arab publishing scene by Daniel del Castilo in 2002 quoted Ibrahim al-Moallem, Chairman of the Arab Publishers’ Union and former founding trustee of IPAF, as saying that although no exact statistics are available, the quantity of books published in the Arab world is very small in relation to its population of 300 million speakers in 22 countries.  Publishers' print runs of 5,000 in the Middle East are considered huge. Religious books - mostly the reproduction of medieval or old texts - account for 17% of the total number of books published in Arab countries, compared to 5% of the total in other parts of the world. The region is also plagued by not having proper distribution or promotion networks for the few books that are published annually.    

The difficulties facing a young novelist in the Arab world, or an established one for that matter, are not limited to the sad condition of publishing and distribution networks in the region - which includes of course censorship issues. The novel itself, in its widely accepted modern European genre, was late in coming to the Arabic language.  Poetry, with its oral tradition, was always the mainstay of the classical Arab heritage. In an article published in 2008, Rasheed El-Enany, an IPAF trustee, and others note that Arabic literature both classical and popular has always known diverse forms of prose narrative. However it was only in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies, during the nascent days of modern Arabic fiction, which lagged 200 years behind European fiction, that modern forms of narrative literature were developed along the lines of the European Novel[1].

The new Arabic novel took over from an earlier neo-classical movement which sought to rediscover the literary traditions of the past and was influenced by genres such as the maqama. Although this modern western genre of the novel has become - probably beginning as late as  the 1940s - firmly anchored as a major component of modern Arabic literature, the Arab novelist today has to contend with an even more restricted readership within an already small circle of general readers in the Arab world, with most publishers boasting a print run of 1000 copies of new novels. As El-Enany pointed out in the same article cited above, no Arab author (including the only Arab Nobel Literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz whose print runs only reached a meager 10,000) can earn a living from royalties in today’s Arab world.

Of course a large number of important literary prizes did exist in the region prior to IPAF in recognition of these facts. Abu Dhabi itself launched the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2007 in memory of the late Sheikh Zayed and his commitment to education and the spreading of knowledge in his country and beyond. Regarded as one of the most prestigious and well-funded prizes in the Arab world, the total value of its prizes of Dh 7 million makes it one of the richest literary awards in the world. Abu Dhabi also supports the annual Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize in Montreal as part of the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival. Other prestigious literary prizes in the UAE include the Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Awards, a biannual prize for artistic and cultural achievements in the Arab world launched by private patronage in 1988. Others elsewhere in the Arab world include the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, associated with the American University of Cairo, as well as many other prestigious prizes in most of the major capitals and cultural centres of the region.

IPAF however was a new genre of prize which came in 2008 to fill a particular niche that was clearly missing on the Arab literary scene. Established as a totally independent and international foundation, based in London and supported by the Booker Prize Foundation, its stated aim was to bring recognition and new readership to outstanding writers in Arabic. Although fully funded by TCA in Abu Dhabi, it is the first prize of its kind in the Arab world that is truly transnational and is totally committed to the independence, transparency and integrity of its selection process. 

IPAF is managed by an independent board of trustees, assisted by an administrator, representing an international mix of writers, experts in Arabic literature and translation, and figures from publishing, media, the cultural world and universities. The chair of the board is elected by the trustees. The first board was originally selected on the basis of the recommendations of a steering committee of experts, publishers and journalists from across the Arab world and beyond, which was established to advise on the intellectual and administrative framework of the prize. Since then it has become the responsibility of the board of trustees to recruit new members when vacancies arise, as they have done regularly over the last six years.  

The trustees serve a term of three years with the possibility of being appointed for a second term by the Board, although representatives from the publishing world may serve only one term. The board of trustees is entrusted with laying out broad strategies for the prize each year and with the appointment of a panel of five judges which changes every year and is made up of literary critics, writers and academics from the Arab world and includes an international specialist who speaks fluent Arabic. 

Publishers may not serve as judges, although writers (as long as they are not competing for the prize) as well as academics, journalists and other public figures with an interest in literature may all be considered to serve as judges. The panel of judges has a chair to lead its deliberations. The board of trustees is committed to ensuring each year that the panel of judges includes women and those below the age of fifty, to ensure that the voice of new writers and marginalized groups is heard. There is also a commitment to ensuring a regional spread amongst the judges.

The board of trustees has no further contact with the panel of judges until the final award of the prize, although the administrator of the prize attends panel discussions to help the judges whenever there is a need for his (in this case her) services or guidance, for example in clarifying prize rules.

It is for the judges alone to decide which novels will appear in the longlist and the shortlist for each year, and which one will be the overall winner. Since IPAF is dedicated to the literary novel, books of poetry or short stories are not considered.  Publishers of Arabic novels may submit three of their novels from the previous year to the Prize.  Writers cannot submit their own work: submissions are to be made by the publishers, in consultation with the writers. The novel must be written in Arabic: Arabic translations of a book originally written in any other language are not eligible. Authors must be living at the time of the award, and only one novel is accepted per author. Manuscripts are not eligible. 

As a new regulation approved by the board of trustees in 2011, the judging panel was given the right, at its discretion, to consider novels published during the previous year which have not been submitted by publishers. The work thus called in by the administrator on behalf of the judges will not be considered as part of its publisher’s three novel submissions quota. Finally, if a publisher submits a novel by an author who has been previously shortlisted for the Prize, this work will also not be counted in the publisher's quota. 

The judges read all the novels submitted, usually in excess of 100 in total, and together decide a longlist, a shortlist, and a winner. To ensure complete integrity, the names of the judges are not revealed until the shortlist announcement. The integrity of the judging process is of fundamental importance for the prize. The judges can have no regard to external influences and opinions, nor to issues of nationality, religion, politics, gender or age, although critics in the Arab press consistently try - but fail - to find evidence to the contrary. The decisions of the judges at all stages of each prize cycle are final and cannot be subject to objection. By submitting their works, the winner and the shortlisted authors agree to be available for promotional activities such as tours and media appearances related to the prize, both in the Arab world and abroad.

Traditionally the shortlist is announced in different capitals of the Arab world but the winner announcement takes place in Abu Dhabi in March or April, with the shortlisted finalists each receiving $10,000 and the winner an additional $50,000 US dollars. The longlist of 16 novels in the running for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction selected from 134 entries came from fifteen different Arab countries including, for the first time, a writer from Kuwait. 

Most of the novels chosen this year focused on contemporary issues from the last 25 years.  The shortlist was announced in Tunis in January 2013, and the previously anonymous judging panel, chaired by Egyptian writer and academic Galal Amin, was announced at  the same time. The shortlisted authors are Sinan Antoon from Iraq, Jana Elhassan from Lebanon, Mohammed Hasan Alwan from Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Issa from Egypt, Saud Alsanousi from Kuwait, and Hussein al-Wad from Tunis.

According to the panel chair, the 2013 shortlist revealed a number of varied thematic concerns marking the state of Arab societies today in an era of major upheavals and they include: religious extremism, the lack of tolerance and the rejection of the other, the split between thought and behavior in the contemporary Arab personality, the Arab woman’s frustration and her inability to break through the social wall built around her, and the laying bare of corrupt reality and hypocrisy on social, religious, political and sexual levels. The winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2013 will be announced at an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 23rd April 2013, on the eve of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

In addition to the annual literary prize which it awards,  IPAF set as one of its main aims the task of  identifying and encouraging future writers of high quality and in 2009 it launched its inaugural annual Nadwa (writers’ workshop) for groups of aspiring writers from across the Arab world. Participants are recommended by former judges of the prize and come from different countries and with a gender balance. The purpose of the Nadwa is to bring together gifted emerging writers in order to share ideas and develop their writing skills with the help of two established authors as mentors. Participants have to write a short story or novel chapter during the workshop and then read and critically discuss each other's work, in a supportive atmosphere. Two more experienced mentors give suggestions for improvement.

Part of the value of such a workshop is that writers of different nationalities share their experience of writing and the different challenges each faces in his/her home country. Mansoura Ez Eldin (Egypt) and Mohammed Hasan Alwan (Saudi Arabia) who took part in this workshop have both gone on in later years to be shortlisted for the prize. Mohammed Hasan Alwan was in fact shortlisted this year for his novel "The Beaver" which he began in the workshop in 2009.  The new fiction written at the Nadwa is published in Arabic and in English translation and shown at the literary book fairs of the region. A first of its kind for Arab writers, it takes place under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan in the Western District of Abu Dhabi in the scenic Liwa Oasis.  Participants in the 2012 Nadwa came from the Yemen, UAE, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq.

An exceptional prize, therefore, for a new Arab world in which the Arabic novel has become the leading purveyor of complex and rapidly evolving social themes and ideas, and a major communication tool linking the different corners of the Arab world together, IPAF has been able, during the last six years, to emerge as one of the most important literary events of the region. By bringing into focus new talented authors as well as established ones from different parts of the Arab world, including countries which were not in the mainstream of literary output for the Arabic novel, and through its special transnational and independent set-up and its unique selection process,  IPAF has made an enormous impact on the book trade in the Arab world.

But first I would like to address briefly three issues which raise interesting points regarding IPAF and the Arab literary scene from my personal experience with the administration of the prize. The first is the initial reaction to the arrival of this new award by some of the established old guard of the Arab literary world composed of critics and self-appointed arbiters of literary merit. To them, especially in the traditional old Arab cultural capitals of the region, the new prize which seemed to come from London with a totally unfamiliar structure was an intruder on a heavily guarded closed turf and it was faced with a great deal of skepticism, if not outright hostility and suspicion. The credibility and the motivation of its organizers or of its participating novelists were critically questioned and dark aspersions were cast on their characters.   

Given the paranoiac mode of thinking in the popular Arab mind based on the belief in the existence of mysterious conspiracies woven by an invisible hand in every sphere of public life, some critics even went to the extent of claiming that all the novelists chosen for the prize were selected because they seek to shame Arab society in the West as part of a nefarious post-Orientalist mission. As I indicated earlier, some critics tried to find a sectarian or national bias in the selection process, but the sheer diversity of the nationality and religion of the authors longlisted over the years soon made such attempts ineffective. Eventually the prize won general acclaim in the majority of the literary press but while it lasted, the initial campaign of innuendo and uncorroborated accusations, which still raises an ugly head from time to time, was a sad comment on the mindset and the monopolising power exercised by some mandarins of literary criticism in the Arab literary scene. 

The second issue is closely related to the first and it concerns the exclusive mindset of rigid and closed thought systems (political, social and cultural) in the region which continue to impede the free flow of new ideas and perspectives that make for a truly fertile social ground for modernization, innovation and change. The selection process of IPAF's longlisted and shortlisted authors through an independent panel composed of five individuals who change every year was often criticized in the Arab press and the jurors, who are called upon to explain their choices both at the announcement of the shortlist and of the winner for the award, were often brought under intense emotional pressure, sometimes of a personal nature, from peers and critics. Let me explain. 

The panel members are required to read all the books submitted to them - in excess of a hundred - and then to arrive, through a process of discussion and persuasion, at common choices which are ratified by majority vote. It is not easy, with the vast scope of different and diverging literary tastes in the domain of novel reading, to arrive at unanimous decisions and there is no magical set formula that fits all genres. But as in all democratic processes, once a vote is taken the panel is bound to its collective choice. 

The pressure during the process can become truly traumatic. During the awarding of the prize in 2011 the panel was unable to come to a majority vote on one choice and the prize administration made a one-time exception in allowing that particular panel to choose twin winners, although  new regulations now ensure that panels commit in advance to come down to one choice, no matter how arduous the discussion. During the selection process for another year a jury member resigned, having already approved a collective choice, because she could not take the criticism from close friends in literary circles in her own country. Jurors are bound now by panel rules to engage themselves in advance to collective responsibility for the panel's final choice made by majority vote. On yet another occasion the chair of the jury had to change his speech at the awarding of the prize to explain how saddened - and alarmed - he was by the nature and style of personal, sometimes vicious, attacks which he had received during the process.   

Once again we are faced by the sad fact that a rigid set of literary mandarins ascribe to themselves alone the ability to spot, and reward, literary excellence in the field of the novel, in accordance with a preconceived and hermetically sealed formula of set criteria that they alone can decipher or sanction, a holy grail set aside for the sole discernment of the consecrated cognoscenti! 

It seems that some critics will not accept the simple fact that five intelligent, highly educated, and well-informed and read individuals from different backgrounds - academic, literary or general - can among themselves discern quality and value in the novels they read. All they have to do is to point us, as general readers, towards a longlist, a shortlist, and a final winner of the award. By sifting through the vast body of literature of fiction in the Arab world published each year, they do the readers, the authors, and the publishers an enormous service for which they earn our admiration and respect. 

The choice of a winner does not mean the exclusion of all the other novels of quality in the year's run. The simple idea is to encourage the reading of as many good novels as possible. The choice of a winning author at the end of the process is not the awarding of an academic decree for a doctorate thesis in quantum physics, or literature for that matter, which requires highly specialized credentials or tools, apart from the common sense ones of good literary judgment, knowledge and taste, to identify and appreciate quality fiction.  The panel's choice is after all the mere recommendation of good novels by literate individuals for us to read and enjoy and it is, in the end, up to us as readers either to endorse or reject their choices. 

It goes without saying that IPAF welcomed all the controversies and criticisms it received as an essential ingredient of a successful literary initiative.  Its confidence in the end-product it was delivering, the high quality of novels chosen and the bewildering variety of talent, often new and young, it was able to detect in a rapidly changing Arab world was reward enough for its endeavours. And controversy does raise the profile of the prize even when it is negative. It encourages discussion and debate, always a healthy catalyst for creative thinking. The only hope the prize administration and the authors themselves ever had was that in the end the novels themselves - and not personal issues - would receive adequate interest in regard to their content and style as the only valid themes of serious and legitimate discussion. 

The third and final issue I wish to discuss before turning to the impact of IPAF on the book trade is Abu Dhabi's involvement with this prize.  Undoubtedly the association of Abu Dhabi, with its universally respected prestige, status and acknowledged reputation across the Arab world, added credibility and legitimacy from the outset to the new unknown arrival in the world of Arab literary awards.  As I said, Abu Dhabi had its own literary awards which seek to promote and encourage creativity in the Arab world. Its support for this new Prize was anchored in its general cultural strategy and vision.

The cultural vision of the Abu Dhabi Emirate emerged from the profound belief of the UAE government that the requirements for social development in the 21st century must be based on a comprehensive plan that includes the development of a knowledge-based society, achieved through the provision of the essential elements of education and culture. These two complimentary and primordial sectors of human development need to work together as two harmonized components, and they take top priority in the government’s proposals for planning and investment.[2]

The publishing industry and its essential role as an incubating environment for creativity in all fields of knowledge plays a central part in Abu Dhabi's plans and strategies in this domain. This reflects its belief that support of the publishing industry, in all its forms, is crucial in the process of cultural development and for the sharing of knowledge and learning. Notwithstanding the substantial part played by new media forms and information technologies in our lives, the printed word still occupies a central position for any cultural initiative. Books continue to be the main medium for the sharing of values and ideas. For all these reasons, Abu Dhabi Government took the step of launching various initiatives and programmes in support of the publishing industry and in encouraging literary creativity which must accompany any meaningful advancement in human development.

In addition to its prestigious literary prizes, mentioned above, the Abu Dhabi National Library, for example, has published since 1992 well over 600 books including printed, electronic and audio books and encyclopedias. Other initiatives include Qalam, a project dedicated to the nurturing of local UAE literary talents which publishes, translates and prints young authors. There is also Kalima, a project devoted to financing the translation, publishing and distribution of the most important classical and modern books from a wide variety of languages into Arabic. A Poetry Academy was set up which aims to encourage poets and to gain a wider audience for their output. And last but not least, its annual International Book Fair has established itself as one of the most important in the Arab world in support of Abu Dhabi's commitment to a flourishing book industry in the region[3].

It was as part of this strategic vision that Abu Dhabi adopted and fully supports IPAF. Its financial patronage is disinterested and strictly hands off. It does not seek to influence the deliberations of the board of trustees, nor does it necessarily endorse the choice of books made by its selection panels. In fact, two of the books appearing on the shortlist of the IPAF were, at different times in its history, banned in Abu Dhabi due to their sexually explicit language.

I come at last to talk about the general impact this prize has had on the book industry and on the wider literary scene in the Arab world and beyond.

It is generally acknowledged today that the announcements made by IPAF about the longlist, the shortlist, and the award itself attract vast Arab and international coverage in a variety of established media in the Arab world and abroad. This includes all the major satellite broadcasting television stations in the Arab world and its major journals. International attention is signaled by its wide coverage by major mainstream media such as the BBC, the Guardian, and the Economist, among others. The Economist, in its edition of March 26th 2011, called IPAF "The Arab world's most talked-about literary prize".

On Al Jazira.net, a pan-Arab website, there is currently a page dedicated to IPAF and readers can vote on the shortlisted novel which they wish to win the prize. The Kuwaiti novel is currently second in this poll, which shows that people are reading novels from writers who might have been overlooked before (in this case, because he is Kuwaiti, also young and unknown). IPAF has even been accused of favouring young writers because some IPAF nominees have been in this category. It has brought new talent to the fore, such as Khaled Khalifa, Mansoura Ez Eldin and Khaled al-Berry.

Although IPAF provokes huge controversy at times, it is undeniably acknowledged today to be the most important prize for the Arab novel. Author Ibrahim Issa (shortlisted in 2013) recently said there was a need to break literary idols and that novel criticism should focus on the works themselves not the authors. A former IPAF judge said that the prize has earned the respect of its rapidly expanding public at the expense of its traditional critics. The actual actors - often young and full of new ideas and hopes - in the literary world begin to spread their wings and assert their views in a formerly closed environment. 

In addition to coverage in the media, many book clubs across the Arab world regularly read the IPAF shortlist (and sometimes also the longlist) and meet on a monthly basis to discuss the books. They include, for example, Iqraa, Al Multaqa, and Rewayat book clubs in the UAE. The Banipal Book Club in London reads IPAF-nominated novels in English.

It has become evident that, because of IPAF, readers from North Africa are reading novels from the Middle East and vice versa. For example, in Tunis, a discussion was held recently in a tent in Avenue Bourguiba about the Egyptian, Kuwaiti and Iraqi novels on the 2013 shortlist. Novels from Morocco and Algeria have done extremely well considering the relatively few submissions to IPAF from those countries: "The Arch and the Butterfly" by Moroccan Mohammed Achaari won in 2011 and Moroccan Bensalim Himmich and Algerian Bachir Mefti were shortlisted in 2011 and 2012. Razan Naim al-Maghrabi from Libya was longlisted in 2011. Algerian Wacini Laredj (A Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner) has been twice longlisted (2011, 2013).

The impact of IPAF on increased book sales is hard to quantify because Arab publishers' sales figures are difficult to obtain. Bachar Chebaro of Arab Scientific Publishers has said however that usually 1000 copies of longlisted novels are immediately sold upon announcement of the list and the same number again with shortlisted novels. These may not be huge numbers in comparison with the West, but for the Arab world, it is a start.  My personal experience with bookshops in the UAE (Macgrudy, Borders, Kinokuniya, for example) is that both the longlisted and shortlisted novels become readily available on their bookshelves with clear advertising bands designating them as IPAF lists. This was not the case five or four years ago.

The announcement of IPAF lists helps also with the distribution of its novels, which is a huge problem in the Arab world. For example Egyptian Nasser Iraq's novel "The Unemployed" was not widely on sale in the UAE, but after being longlisted last year it became readily available in all the major bookshops. Nouri Abid, a Tunisian publisher and trustee of the prize, imported large quantities of the longlisted novels prior to the shortlist announcement in Tunis in January 2013. The shortlist sold out  at least in one bookshop after the announcement. In Cairo, a new bookshop downtown (Tanmia) stocks IPAF novels and the Nadwa books.

One of the main aims of the IPAF is to encourage the translation of Arabic literature into other languages, both as a means of making Arabic fiction better known internationally and in order to boost sales (and thus royalty revenue for author and publisher). In the past five years the prize has secured English translations for all of its winners: Bahaa Taher (2008), Youssef Zeidan (2009), Abdo Khal (2010) and joint winners Mohammed Achaari and Raja Alem (2011). All the translations were commissioned by established publishing houses in the UK and the USA. Taher's "Sunset Oasis" was translated into English by Sceptre in 2009 and has gone on to be translated into 8 languages worldwide. 

In fact all of the winning titles, and a significant number of shortlisted and longlisted books have been translated internationally, in South America, Europe and Asia. The Italian and French rights for Habib Selmi's "The Women of al-Basatin" were sold as soon as he was shortlisted.  IPAF novels have been translated so far into 20 languages. For the next five years, Turner publishing house will publish three winning shortlisted novels each year into Spanish (so far "Sunset Oasis", "The Druze of Belgrade" and "The Women of al-Basatin").

Journalists from Brazil and India have recently approached the IPAF administration and asked that the 2013 shortlisted authors be made available for interviews. The prize is thus becoming of interest not only in the Arab world, Europe and the USA, but its reputation has travelled far and wide. There is an IPAF novel - "The American Granddaughter" by Inaam Kachachi - which has appeared in Chinese!

Commenting on the rapid increase in translating Arab fiction into foreign languages today, Peter Clark, a founding trustee of the board, said that although contemporary Arabic writing was, in the words of American critic Edward Said, an "embargoed literature" in the nineties, with translation brought out only by "niche" specialized publishers like Quartet or the AUC Press, today mainstream publishers have entered the field, translators have been better rewarded, and Arabic literature has become part of world literature[4].

Clark ascribed the reasons for this rapid increase in translation activities to the more culturally active part played by a growing Arab diaspora in the West, with the emergence of a new generation of professional translators tied to the expansion of Arabic departments in Western universities and their involvement in contemporary Arabic culture. Other turning points in this trend, according to Clark, were the emergence of Banipal magazine in London in 1998 as a journal dedicated to modern Arabic literature, and the establishment of IPAF in 2007 as an internationally recognized prize of merit.

In addition to this general interest in IPAF novels in the media and in translation, IPAF authors are also heavily involved in promoting their novels and in discussing the state of contemporary Arab fiction. They are invited annually to festivals and book fairs to speak about their work. For example in 2011 and 2012, authors spoke at the Berlin Literary Festival, in New York (The New York Abu Dhabi University), London (Shubbak Festival), the Edinburgh Festival, Paris (at the INALCO conference), Hay Festivals in Cartagena, Mexico, Segovia and Beirut, and at Abu Dhabi, Algeria, Tunisia, and Cairo book fairs, amongst other appearances. Ibrahim Nasrallah was in London in November 2012 on his first UK tour, where he launched the English translation of his historical novel "Time of White Horses", on the IPAF shortlist in 2009. Twice shortlisted Tunisian author Habib Selmi will be in South Korea at the Korean Literature forum in April 2013.

I hope that I have succeeded in giving you an overview of the IPAF and its impact on the book trade and the modern literary scene in the Arab world. I will conclude by quoting from the same article which appeared in the Economist on March 26th 2011, already cited in my paper above: "Arabic publishers say the prize inspires reading. Yet not everyone is thrilled. Ms. Alem's novel is officially 'unavailable' at home, not having been passed by her government's censor. Readers buy under the counter, on the internet, at book fairs or abroad. Sales of "Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles" shot up after the Saudi author, Abdo Khal, won last year. His book was passed by the censor soon after he won the prize."

I suppose that no-one can now deny that literary prizes in the region in general, and IPAF in particular, are playing an important part in helping to shape the rapid cultural and political changes witnessed by Arab societies at the turn of this millennium.  As the Saudi publisher of Raja Alem's book said in an interview, even if authorities ban a book at home, it would still find its way to readers. The Arab novel is here to stay as a major player in a rapidly changing cultural, political and social scene. The revolutionary emergence of a global network of instantaneous communications in the ether floating above all forms of political or social control has changed the face of Arab publishing and literature forever, and there is no way for the genie to be brought back into its straitjacket bottle whether by censorious officialdom or by the old guard of a monopolizing and exclusionist literary fraternity. 

Zaki Nusseibeh

Abu Dhabi 18th February, 2013

[1]  Arab Novelists deserve acclaim, December 2008

[2] Paper presented by Zaki Nusseibeh February 10, 2011 at the IPA General Conference in Abu Dhabi

[3] Zaki Nusseibeh, IPA 10 February, 2011

[4] Peter Clark, the Linguist, 2013