Thursday March 28th, 2024
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Egyptian Author's Debut Novel Wins French Award for Arabic Literature

Previously an award-winning film maker, Omar Robert Hamilton is now an award-winning author.

Staff Writer

British-Egyptian novelist, Omar Robert Hamilton, has been announced as the winner the Arabic Literature Award for the translated version of his debut novel, The City Always Wins, which delves into the 2011 Revolution and the events that surrounded it.

Founded in 2013, the award is granted by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and the Arab World Institute in Paris, to Arabic works that are translated into French. Hamilton's novel was translated by Sarah Gurcel and published by French publishing house, Gallimard. 

Hamilton is set to accept his award on the 24th of October, at the Arab World Institute as part of a special ceremony. Previous winners of the award include Lebanese novelist, Jabbour El-Douaihy, in 2013, Egyptian author, Mohammed El-Fakharany, in 2014, and Iraqi poet, Sinan Anton, in 2017.

Hamilton’s novel was originally published in English in 2017 by Faber and is scheduled to be released soon in Arabic. Writer and head of L’Orient Littéraire praised the book, dubbing it a “ powerful first novel, perfectly mastered, which plunges us into Egypt at the time of the 2011 revolution."

Hamilton is also an award-winning film maker, the co-founder of the Palestinian Festival of Literature and Cairo’s Mosireen Media Collection and has previously written for the Guardian, Mada Masr and Guernica among other publications.

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