6 - 12 September 2001
Issue No.550
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 September 2001 Issue No.550 |
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The award's centenary
On the centenary of the Nobel Prize (established in 1901), 13 years after I was fortunate enough to receive it, all I can say with confidence is that the writers it has drawn attention to are but a small percentage of those who deserve it.
My own experience is interesting nonetheless. The award gave me access to the international literary community, thus offering a more or less unknown writer the chance to be somewhat recognised. "The important thing," the great critic Louis Awad told me after I received the award, "is not the prize in itself but how the writer who gets it is received by critics and readers worldwide." I didn't expect a glamorous reception, and so this unforgettable statement disappointed me to no end.
In some cases -- Bernard Shaw and Jean-Paul Sartre, for example -- the award merely acknowledged an already established literary reputation; but both writers, as we all know, turned it down.
The other thing one could say about the Nobel Prize is that, though there are those who deserved it far more than I did, I was the first Arab writer to receive it; and in this sense perhaps my award did help increase the credibility of Nobel, as the Swedish officials said at the time, since it showed that the institution paid attention to writers outside Europe, whose long and illustrious literary traditions had long been ignored.
Be that as it may, I believe Awad was right. The award means nothing in itself.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
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