14 October 2006
BEIRUT: Humphrey Davies has won the inaugural prize from the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature for his translation of Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury's "Gate of the Sun." At a ceremony held in London on Monday, the judges - including author Moris Farhi, journalist Maya Jaggi and translator Roger Allen - said they chose Davies' work unanimously over a field of contenders that included Mohamed El-Bisatie's "Clamor of the Lake," translated by Hala Halim, and Edwar al-Kharat's "Stones of Bobello," translated by Paul Starkey.
The award was set up by the literary journal Banipal and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, which was founded in 2004 to support the publication of Arab writers in English.
The prize is worth some 2,000 British pounds (about $3,700) and is funded by Mohammad al-Sowaidi, secretary general of the Cultural Foundation of Abu Dhabi.
Khoury's "Gate of the Sun" was published in the US by Archipelago Press and in the UK by Harvill Secker. The epic, multi-generational narrative about a cast of Palestinian characters who are expelled from their land in 1948 and end up in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, has already been adapted into a film, directed by Yousry Nasrallah.
Davies worked on the English language translation for eight weeks straight in the summer of 2004.
"'Gate of the Sun' is a work of extraordinary strength that non-Arabic readers need to have available," Davies said at the ceremony. - The Daily Star
