Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel

       The Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel is a new, big-money prize for Arabic fiction,and in Al-Ahram Weekly Nourhan Tewfik 'sums up the debate surrounding Qatar's new literary prize', in A prize with a view.
       Prize-winner Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid weighs in -- noting:

"In 1996," he says, "I won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature from AUC. At the time, the committee was also anonymous and there was no application process. I was awarded the prize without applying. But the same debate ensued, because I was the first to receive the it. People argued that I was a foreign agent.

At the time, my response was: 'An agent for $1000 ? Come on, $2000 would have been more realistic !"