French-speaking author and literary translator Souad Labbize won the 2024 Ibn Khaldoun-Senghor Prize for her “masterful translation” into French of the novel “Le Désastre de la maison des notables” by Tunisian writer Amira Ghenim, informed Tuesday evening the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF) on its official page.
This distinction was announced on the evening of Tuesday, December 3, 2024, during the award ceremony organized at the Arab World Institute (IMA) in Paris.
“The Disaster of the House of Notables” is the French translation of the novel in Arabic “Nazilat Dar El Akaber” by Amira Ghenim, published in 2020 by Masciliana editions and awarded the Comar d’Or for the Arabic novel the same year. Translated by Souad Labbize (Algeria-France-Tunisia), the 494-page French edition was published in August 2024 by Éditions Philippe Rey (France) in co-publishing with Barzakh – Collection Khamsa (Algeria).
This novel traces more than fifty years of Tunisian history, from the struggle for independence to the revolution of 2011. It depicts the intersecting destinies of two bourgeois families: the Naifers, conservative and rigid, and the Rassaa, progressive and liberal, in a context of political upheaval.
Souad Labbize, also a poet, novelist and anthologist, was among four finalists for this prestigious prize: Ilyass Amharar (Morocco/France) for “Language and theology Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī (543/1148)”, Sarah Rolfo (Belgium) for “Bread on Uncle Milad’s table” by Mohammed Alnaas (Libya) and Marie Tawk (Lebanon) for his translation into Arabic of “The Elusive War” by Jean-Marc Moura (France).
The jury, chaired by Bassam Baraké, secretary general of the Union of Arab Translators (Lebanon), is composed of Abdesslam Benabdelali (Morocco), professor of philosophy, translator, essayist and literary critic, Zahida Darwiche-Jabbour (Lebanon), professor of French literature and translator, Fayza El Qasem (France), professor emeritus at the Higher School of translators and interpreters, Mohammed Mahjoub (Tunisia), philosopher, translator and writer, and Hana Subhi (France and Iraq), translator and professor of French literature at Paris-Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi.
Born in Algeria in 1965, Souad Labbize lived in Germany and Tunisia before settling in Toulouse. After her first novel “I would have liked to be a snail”, she wrote collections of poems such as “A Pocket Ladder to Reach the Sky” and “Lovers’ Drafts”, as well as a story, “Stepping Over the Puddle where hell is reflected.
Very committed to defending equality between men and women, she writes on behalf of women who take the road to exile to assert their independence. His collection “I cross the barbed wire”, won the Mediterranean Poetry Prize in 2020.
The Ibn Khaldoun-Senghor Translation Prize in Human Sciences, created in 2008 by the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) and the Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Sciences (ALECSO), rewards each year a translation from French to Arabic or from Arabic to French, thus encouraging cultural and literary exchanges between the Arab world and the French-speaking world.
