The Tunisian novelist Chokri Mabkhout won this Wednesday, May 6, the International Prize for the Arab novel “Booker 2015” for his novel “Ettalyeni” (the Italian).
The novel “Ettalyeni” marks Tunisia at the Booker
It is the first Tunisian to win this award since its creation in 2007. During a ceremony organized on this occasion in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Chokri Mabkhout obtained the sum of $ 50,000 (around 120,000 dinars) as well as a translation of his work in English.
The novel “Ettalyeni” published by “Dar Altanweer” was chosen from 180 works, considered the best novels of the last twelve months, of 15 Arab countries.
Choukri Mabkhout relates through his novel “Ettalyeni” the events that followed the Arab Spring Revolution, as well as the Tunisian transition period from the time of Bourguiba to that of Ben Ali during the 1987 coup. The Tunisian author wished to see “his novel marks the name of Tunisia in the register of the winnings of the Booker Prize”. Tunisian representative
The academic and linguist Chokri Mabkhout was selected as a finalist, on February 13, as well as five competitors, a Sudanese, a Moroccan, a Lebanese, a Palestinian and a Syrian. He was therefore the only Tunisian representative among the six Arab nationalities.
The six finalist novels in the running for the “Booker 2015” were selected according to scientific and literary criteria by an international jury made up of five members, grouping writers, poets, criticism and academics. Each of the finalists won a price of $ 10,000 (around 19,000 dinars).
Chaired by the Palestinian poet and writer Mourid Barghouthi, the jury brought together the Egyptian academic Aymen El-desouki, the poet and critic Bahreïni byWeen Habib, the Iraqi critic and university Najm Kadhim and the academic in Arab literature and Japanese translator Kaoru Yamamoto.
Laure-Hélène Bonenfant
