Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Booker countdown
SPECULATION over this year's Booker prize has intensified following last Wednesday's announcement of the short list. The six novels shortlisted are Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Andrew Miller's Oxygen, David Mitchell's Number 9 Dream, Rachel Seiffert's The Dark Room, and Ali Smith's Hotel World.
Carey and McEwan have emerged as favourites. Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, a fictionalised memoir of Australia's famous outlaw, has already won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Carey won the Booker in 1988 for his novel Oscar and Lucinda. McEwan, once dubbed "Ian Macabre" for his earlier novels, is also a previous winner, snatching the prize three years ago with Amsterdam.
Atonement, which deals with a false accusation of rape made by a teenager in 1935 and traces its consequences to the killing fields of 1940 and then delivers a final twist from the vantage point of 1999, has won rave reviews.
Critics have pointed out the profound "Englishness" of this year's selections, notable after a period dominated by post- colonial authors writing in English, including Salman Rushdie and Arundhuti Roy. They have also been interested in the novels left off the shortlist, which include Beryl Bainbridge's According to Queeny, Salman Rushdie's Fury (deemed too autobiographical), Melvyn Bragg's A Son of War and Nick Hornby's widely admired How to be Good.
This year's jury is headed by the former conservative home secretary Lord Baker and includes the writers Michèle Roberts and Philip Hensher, the academic Rory Watson and the journalist and biographer Kate Summerscale. The winner of the £21,000-worth 2001 Booker prize will be announced at a televised ceremony at Guildhall, London, on Wednesday 17 October.

Dreams in exile
PALESTINIAN filmmaker Mai Masri has been touring with her latest film Ahlam Al- Manfa (the English title is Of Dreams and Fears) in Canada and the US. A 56-minute production set and filmed in the refugee camps of Shatila and Dahisha, Of Dreams and Fear offers a contrasting portrayal to the by-now-stereotypical image of Palestinian teenagers.
The film centres around two teenage Palestinian girls Mona (13 years old from Shatila) and Manar (14 years old from Al- Dahisha). The two girls tell of their experiences and in doing so expose the tense physical and psychological atmosphere in which they have grown up and the constant fear of the future that overwhelms them.
The film, which Masri hopes will receive an airing on US public television, was partly financed by the Public Broadcast Corporation. It is also scheduled to be shown at SOAS in London as well as at the festivals of Beirut, Ismailia and Göteborg.

And Spain too
THE COMMITTEE of the Incurt Short Fiction Film Festival of Europe and the Mediterranean, which takes place 7-11 November in the city of Lleidd, Spain, has selected two graduation projects from the National Institute of Cinema, out of a total of 550 international submissions, to compete in the festival.
The Egyptian films Shagarit Al-Tout (Berry Tree) by Khaled Hammad and Wasat Al-Madina (Downtown) by Amir Ramsis, are among the 51 films from 20 countries in the festival's competition.

Awad honoured

THE SUPREME Council for Culture (SCC) inaugurates this season's cultural activities on Saturday with a three-day seminar honouring the late Louis Awad. Commemorating the tenth anniversary of the celebrated critic's death the seminar will host 60 Egyptian and Arab intellectuals and academics who will discuss aspects of his thought and writings. Among the expected participants are Faisal Draj, Ni'ma Khaled, Mohamed Shahin, Nabil Soliman, Tha'ir Dib, Gihad Fadl, Anwar Luca, Salah Fadl, Assem El-Dessouqi and Farida El- Naqqash.
Awad's prolific literary output includes more than 40 titles in a diversity of genres including a collection of free verse (Plutoland wa Qasa'id Ukhra), a novel (Al- 'Anqa' aw Tarikh Hassan Miftah), a play (Al-Rahib) and two autobiographical tomes. Awad also produced many Arabic translations of, among others, Aeschylus, Horace, Shakespeare and T S Eliot.
The SCC will publish translations of both Awad's PhD dissertation and his book Prometheus Unbound as part of the celebration.

Classical notes

THE NATIONAL Centre for Theatre has launched a new project aimed at collecting and saving the classical Arabic music heritage. Compositions of musicians such as Hassan Rashid, Youssef Greiss, Abu Bakr Khayrat and Aziz El-Shawwan will be collected, classified, recorded, studied and analysed. The Centre's director, Osama Abu Taleb, has urged the families and friends of late classical composers and musicians to provide the centre with whatever surviving manuscripts and recordings they have, whether through donations or in return for compensation.
A group of six musicians, Esmat Abbas, Mustafa Garana, Mohamed Karam, Sherine Rushdi, Mohamed Youssri, and Marwa Ibrahim are in charge of recording these classical compositions anew.

Devil beware

FOR TWO months playwright Ahmed Shakhsoukh's Al-Shaytan Yarqus (The Devil Dances) has been denied censorship approval. The play did finally receive permission and was part of the fringe performances of the recent Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. Directed by Mohamed Gaber, it is now playing at Al-Salam Theatre, with Rania Youssef, Nisrina, Magdi Idris, Mahmoud Abdel-Ghaffar, Adel El-Koumi and Husam Fayyad.
Compiled by Amina Elbendary

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