RAYA is proud to represent Mostafa Khalifa’s “The shell”, a narrative and literary non fiction story of a man who was unjustly, and without a trial, jailed for 12 years in Syria.

For the second time, a novel by Khaled Khalifa is on the shortlist of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), also known as the Arab Man Booker. “There are no knives” is co-published by Dar El Ain, Egypt, and Dar Al Adab, Lebanon. In 2008, Khalifa’s “In praise of hatred” was also shortlisted for the IPAF.

With You They Will Climb The Mountain – With Them You Will Reach The Summit

This prize, awarded since 1996 is a major award for contemporary Arabic literature.

The award is presented annually on December 11, the birthday of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, by the President of the American University in Cairo in the presence of the Minister of Culture and many other prominent leaders of Egypt’s cultural life.

Exceptionally, and for the first time, the winner of the prize was unable to receive the award in person. Khaled Khalifa was not given permission to leave Syria by the authorities.

On Tuesday November 5th, Lebanese author Jabbour Douaihy received the Young Arab literature award, created in the Spring of 2013 by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation, and the Arab World Institute, Paris.
Eight titles were shortlisted, by authors Saber Mansouri (“I was born eight times”, Le Seuil), Nabil Naoum (“Amir”, Actes Sud, Sindbad), Ahmed Dich (“Chibani”, Anne Carrière), Salim Bachi (“The last summer of a young man”, Flammarion), Jabbour Douaihy (“Chased away”, Actes Sud, Sindbad), Hayat El Yamani (“Bi-cultural”, Anne Carrière), Charif Majdalani (“The last lord of Marsad”, Le Seuil), Alia Mamdouh …

I first thought of this project in a random conversation with Nadim Tarazi, a friend who owned my favorite bookshop in Beirut in the 1990s, and now runs “La Maison du livre”, association for book professionals. He was visiting Paris where I then lived. It was the winter of 2006. I had been a literary agent specialized in Arabic literature for two years, and was struggling to find independent information on books. This is where the realization of a need for more information on Arab books, as well as for quality standards, stemmed from.