Sudanese Writer Wins Katara First Prize For Short Story
18 July, 2021
DOHA, Qatar (Sudanow) - Sudanese writer Mohammad Ismael has ranked the first in the contest of the Qatar-run Katara Prize for Short Story.
As first winner, writer Ismael has collected a financial prize of 15,000 Qatari Rials.
The Katara Prize is an Arabic literary prize based in Qatar. It was established in 2014 by the Katara Cultural Village. The total prize pool is $650,000 and the main prize $200,000, making it one of the richest literary prizes in the world. One of its sponsors is the UNESCO.
Originally the prize was dedicated for novel writing under the name the Katara Prize for Novel Writing, but later on a subsidiary prize for short story was added.
Writer Ismael said his winning story had attempted to draw an analogy with the historical story of the Prophet Joseph and his brothers. It was put in a plot whose characters are members of a family living in the 21st Century.
Organizers had, beforehand, invited for the contending short stories to rotate around the issue of kinship “in view of the great importance Islam had lent to the issues of kinship, family, lineage and relatives.“
It is the first time for the prize to accept contenders from outside Qatar as it was usually confined to Qataris or foreigners living in Qatar.
Syrian Writer Ms. Suzan Ibrahim Alsa’abi has won the second prize for her short story “At a Distance of a Balcony”, collecting 12,000 rials, while the second prize of 10,000 rials was won by Ahmed Abdelimam Jabri of Iran for his story “dizziness”.
Some 438 contenders had participated in this contest. A major condition for the participating story is that it should be written in classical Arabic free from errors. Another condition was that the story should not have been published before or had won a previous prize.
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