Banipal Translation Prize 2021: Shortlist of 5

Saif Ghobash Banipal Translation Prize logo (source: arablit.org)

Organisers of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation have announced this year’s shortlist. Three translators have made the shortlist for the first time in 2021: Sarah Enany (for Rasha Adly’s 'The Girl with the Braided Hair'), Sawad Hussain (for Shahla Ujayli’s 'A Bed for the King’s Daughter'), and Elisabeth Jaquette (for Dima Wannous’ 'The Frightened Ones').

They are joined, on the prize’s five-book shortlist, by acclaimed translators Marilyn Booth and Jonathan Wright. Booth, who is shortlisted this year for her translation of Hoda Barakat’s The Night Mail, which became 'Voices of the Lost' in translation, was a runner-up for the prize in 2007, with a translation of Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s Thieves in Retirement, and she was also shortlisted in 2019 for her Booker International-winning translation of Jokha al-Harthi’s Celestial Bodies. Wright – in addition to co-winning the prize in 2013, being commended in 2015, and winning it in 2016 – has been shortlisted each of the last three years.

This £3000-pound-prize’s 2021 shortlist was chosen from a list of sixteen eligible works. Notably, no poetry or non-fiction was chosen for this year’s shortlist.

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