“The Sharp Bend at Al-Bakur,” by Libyan writer Najwa Bin Shatwan has won the 2019 Arablit Story Prize.
The piece is translated by Sawad Hussain.
Founded in 2018, the Arablit Story Prize, celebrates the best short stories, in any genre, translated from Arabic into English.
The first edition of the prize was won by Mohammad Abdelnabi for “Our Story” translated by Robin Moger.
“The Sharp Bend at Al-Bakur,” is from Bin Shatwan’s 2019 collection, “An Ongoing Coincidence,” published by Riad El-Rayyes Books. The collection is also on the longlist for the 2019 Almultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story.
One of the judges, Nariman Youssef said this about the winning story:
“The Sharp Bend at Al-Bakur’ brings the starkness of war to life with a simple narrative that flits between the banal and the fantastical and remains poised between humour and tragedy, without even seeming to linger on the subject of war at all.”
“Like a lot of Bin Shatwan’s short fiction, it tells a historically urgent story while also managing to sound like a timeless folktale”
The winning story receives a $500 prize, split between author and translator. All four stories from the 2019 shortlist will appear in the fall 2019 issue of ArabLit Quarterly.
Click here to read the winning story
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