DOHA: The fourth Katara Festival of Arabic Novels will open tomorrow at the Katara Cultural Village with participation of prominent writers and critics in Arabic fiction. The three-day festival will conclude on Wednesday.
A major highlight of the Festival will be the awarding of the winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novels 2018. The first day of the Festival will witness opening of the Katara Library of Arabic Novels at Katara premises and an exhibition on the life and works of renowned Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani.
The day’s events will include the launch of an innovative app by Katara named #mishwar_wariwaya that allows people to listen to audio version of select novels, while walking for physical exercise.
A signing ceremony of books by winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel 2017 will also take place on the day. The books including novels and critical studies are being published by Katara Publishing House under the auspices of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel.
Events on the first day will conclude with a seminar on Ghassan Kanafani followed by screening of a film based on Kanafani’s novel “Return to Haifa” produced by Iraqi film maker Qassim Hawal.
The second day will see the launch of a new Katara initiative named “Narrations from Novels” for school students to get them acquainted with Arabic novels.
Two seminars on literary criticism will take place on the same day focusing on women fiction writers in Arabic and “novels and theatre,” with participation of prominent writers and critics. The day will conclude with a grand award ceremony to honour winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel 2018.
The Katara Prize for Arabic Novel has grown as the most prestigious literary award in the Arab world in terms of entries and the value of the prize.
As many as 1,283 entries had been received for the current and latest edition of the Prize — 596 participants in the category of unpublished novels, 562 in published novels category, 47 in unpublished critical studies, in addition to 78 participants in the category of unpublished novels by young writers. The participants included 322 women and 961 men.
The award carries cash prizes worth a total of $300,000 in the unpublished novels category. Each of the five winners will receive $60,000.
The prize for unpublished novels category amounts to a total of $150,000, equally divided into five winners, each getting $30,000. Each of the five winners in the unpublished critical studies (criticism of novels) category will get $15,000 taking it to a total of $75,000.
The award for unpublished novels by young writers totals $50,000, with each of the five winners getting $10,000.
Al the prize-winning novels and critical studies and translations of the winning novels (both the published and unpublished categories) have been published by the Katara Publishing House.
