DOHA: Winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel will be revealed at a ceremony on May 20, Katara announced yesterday. A total of 10 published and unpublished novels will be chosen as prize winners, one of which will be selected as best novel to be turned into drama.
Katara General Manager Dr Khalid Ibrahim Al Sulaiti said a three-day celebration will be held from May 18 to 20, during which there will be a number of symposiums and conferences associated to the closing ceremony in which the jury will award the winners.
The celebration will be attended by the winners, leading authors and intellectuals, academics and media persons besides the jury.
The competition witnessed wide participation from young and prominent Arab novelists coming from different countries. The entries included a total of 700 published and unpublished novels.
Egypt was leading in terms of the number of participants which reached 240 novels, majority of which were unpublished. The Maghreb region including the countries Algeria and Morocco also had distinguished participation as well as non-Arab countries such as Iran, Chad and Eritrea.
In the GCC region Saudi Arabia was on top with 35 novels both in published and unpublished categories. On women’s participation Al Sulaiti said there were 155 novels written by women which represent 22 percent of the total number of participants.
Regarding the jury committee, Khalid Abdulrahim Al Sayed, general supervisor of the Prize, said there were three juries in addition to a special jury which will choose the novel to be turned into drama. The juries were tasked to read and study all the novels carefully based on the criteria to choose the winners. The first panel includes nine members whose task is to read and choose 30 published and 30 unpublished novels. The second jury includes five members whose job is to narrow down the entries to ten published and ten unpublished novels. The third jury composed of three members will select the winners including five published and five unpublished novels
The drama committee which has three members will select one novel out of the ten which is eligible to be turned into drama which will receive a prize value of $200,000. The Peninsula
