Literary prizes have long held the rapt attention of critics, intellectuals, and readers in the Arab world, as evidenced by the dozens of prizes awarded each year for novels, short story collections, and poetry anthologies. Occasionally, Arab writers have been awarded the International Booker Prize or the Prix Goncourt for translated editions of their works. Yet the Nobel Prize, whose last Arab winner was Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, has eluded them for nearly 40 years. Amir Taj al-Sir writes in “The Annual Nobel Fever,” published in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, that Arab readers and intellectuals follow developments surrounding the Nobel Prize “as if stricken with fever — even though it is not an Arab prize, and it is doubtful that it will ever again be awarded to an Arab after Naguib Mahfouz, given the humiliation and marginalization that Arabs and their ancient civilization face across the world.”* Year after year, anticipation over the year’s winner leaves many in the Arab world asking questions similar to those of Brewin Habib in Al-Quds Al-Arabi: “Will the Nobel remember us after 37 years of absence? And will the eternal nominee, Adonis, finally receive it?”

 

There is a sense of irony, or perhaps tragic justice, in that the story of a woman whose life and presence were forcibly erased from the public sphere continues to linger on the minds of many, unforgettable even 50 years after her death. Just as she forged a path through the social and political barriers confronting her, the Egyptian feminist, poet, and editor Doria Shafik’s legacy as one of the leading figures of the Egyptian women’s liberation movement in the 1940s cannot be forgotten. Shafik strived to make her voice and the voices of all Egyptian women known, undeterred by the many who hurled insults, slander, and mockery her way — but in exchange for her efforts, all her work was seized, her allies turned their backs on her, and she lived out her final years in silence and isolation.