An Arabic-to-English translator from Wales has won the 2024 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
The annual £3,000 ($3,800) award was given to Katharine Halls for her translation of a memoir by Egyptian journalist and writer Ahmed Naji, titled Rotten Evidence and published by McSweeney’s.
Halls described winning the prize as a “wonderful honour”, but said it was “a strange and difficult time to imagine celebrating anything”.
She explained: “This past month has brought us joy and relief at the sight of former detainees walking free from prisons across Syria, where they have spent years in conditions of indescribable cruelty which so many others did not survive.
In her statement, Halls also mentioned Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who Naji dedicated a chapter in the book to. El-Fattah was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison in 2019 for allegedly spreading false news online and has yet to be released despite the completion of his sentence.
“It is impossible to forget, in these times of resurgent fascism, that writing about and against prison will always be a revolutionary act,” Halls added. “Ahmed Naji is a particularly brave, witty, and uncompromising writer, and I hope this accolade will encourage many more readers to pick up his excellent, indeed revolutionary, book.”
One of the judges, editor for the Times Literary Supplement Michael Caines, praised the work, calling it “scathing, humorous, compelling”. Another judge, literary translator Nariman Youssef, said Halls' work helped showcase the nuances of Naji’s voice.
“Halls seamlessly navigates culturally specific idioms and prison slang,” Youssef said. “Her bold choice to offer transliterations or literal translations of terms or phrases that might seem, at first glance, untranslatable – 'truth is a mango’, ‘shambara’ – is justified time and again by the deft elucidations that she weaves into the text with inimitable simplicity.”
Naji, the author of Rotten Evidence, is a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker. In 2016, he was arrested and served almost 300 days in prison for “violating public modesty” with the content of his novel The Use of Life. After being released and moving to the US in 2019, Naji wrote about his experience during that time, charting the journey through the courts and prison systems in contrast to his childhood experiences as the son of a leading figure in the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Halls has previously been honoured for her translations. In 2021, she was awarded the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant to translate Egyptian writer Haytham El-Wardany’s short story collection Things That Can’t Be Fixed. She also won the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation along with Adam Talib on Saudi novelist Raja'a Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace.
Her translation of Naji’s prison memoir was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography in the US. This year's shortlist included three novels, a graphic memoir and a biographical detective story.
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- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
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- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
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U19 World Cup in South Africa
Group A: India, Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka
Group B: Australia, England, Nigeria, West Indies
Group C: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Scotland, Zimbabwe
Group D: Afghanistan, Canada, South Africa, UAE
UAE fixtures
Saturday, January 18, v Canada
Wednesday, January 22, v Afghanistan
Saturday, January 25, v South Africa
UAE squad
Aryan Lakra (captain), Vriitya Aravind, Deshan Chethyia, Mohammed Farazuddin, Jonathan Figy, Osama Hassan, Karthik Meiyappan, Rishabh Mukherjee, Ali Naseer, Wasi Shah, Alishan Sharafu, Sanchit Sharma, Kai Smith, Akasha Tahir, Ansh Tandon
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- Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
- Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
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Dust storm
- Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
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UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
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Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Fixtures (all times UAE)
Saturday
Brescia v Atalanta (6pm)
Genoa v Torino (9pm)
Fiorentina v Lecce (11.45pm)
Sunday
Juventus v Sassuolo (3.30pm)
Inter Milan v SPAL (6pm)
Lazio v Udinese (6pm)
Parma v AC Milan (6pm)
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Monday
Cagliari v Sampdoria (11.45pm)
MATCH INFO
Day 2 at the Gabba
Australia 312-1
Warner 151 not out, Burns 97, Labuschagne 55 not out
Pakistan 240
Shafiq 76, Starc 4-52
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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