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The International Prize for Arabic Fiction was awarded last night in Abu Dhabi. It went to a Saudi novelist called Abdo Khal. The World’s Jeb Sharp has more.

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MARCO WERMAN:  The international prize for Arabic fiction was awarded last night at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.  The award is also known as the Arab Booker Prize and it’s designed to bring contemporary Arabic literature to a wider audience.  This year it went to a Saud novelist named Abdo Khal.  The World’s Jeb Sharp has more.

JEB SHARP:  Abdo Khal won for his novel Spewing Spark as Big as Castles.  The judges called it a brilliant exploration of the relationship between the individual and the state which gives the reader a taste of the horrifying reality of the excessive world of the palace.  Judge Frederic Legrange says it’s written from the point of view of a torturer.

FREDERIC LEGRANGE:  A torturer working for a mysterious master of the palace.  And of course the whole novel has to be analyzed and taken as an allegory of probably first Saudi Arabia, but the Arab world as a whole.

SHARP: Legrange says the novel tries to give voice to those who don’t have one.

LEGRANGE:  There is a wonderful symbol of this in the scene of the cut tongue.  The mother of the narrator has her tongue not so accidentally while falling and then she puts her own tongue in the freezer and her sister-in-law actually takes the tongue and gives it to the cat.

SHARP: Abdo Khal is well known in Saudi Arabia where he’s a fixture in the Jeddah literary and cultural scene.  Khaled al Maeena is the editor of the Arab News there.

KHALED AL MAEENA:  He is about 50 years old.  He’s a novelist.  He has been writing novels and short stories and he’s written quite a few articles, daily articles.  He is a man who has been termed a liberal by many of the hard liners.  He is a small man, very quiet, Hercule Poirot type of figure, but he wields a very strong pen.

SHARP: Mohsen al Moussawi of Columbia University calls Khal’s work a kind of protest literature.

MOHSEN AL MOUSSAWI:  It is not confrontation or an affront or as some people would like to call it.  But I would say it is a kind of protest literature in order to shed some light and to focus also on issues that are rising and becoming serious issues.

SHARP: Abdo Khal’s work may not be directly confrontational, but it’s sensitive enough to get his books banned inside his own country.  But Khaled al Maeena says that doesn’t stop people there from reading them.

MAEENA:  You cannot stop because anybody can get any books.  If his books are not published here, you can just drive 25 miles across to the country Bahrain and buy his books there.  You can go to Egypt – - .  And books come in through Amazon and they come in through all kinds of publishing houses.  So it’s a futile attempt at trying to stifle the voice of someone who means well and who wants to do something for society through his works.

SHARP: Abdo Khal is the first Saudi to win the international prize for Arabic fiction.  He says he hopes the prize will win him new readers for Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles, as well as for the nine novels he wrote before this one.  For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

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