Hassan Daoud received the 2015 AUC Press Naguib Mahfouz Medal for LIterature. (Photo handout) Celebrating Arabic literature for the 19th year since the establishment of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 1996, the American University in Cairo (AUC) Press presented its 2015 award to the esteemed Lebanese writer Hassan Daoud for his novel La Tariq Ila al-Janna (‘No Road to Paradise’). Published in Beirut in 2013 by Dar al-Saqi publishing house, No Road to Paradise is Daoud’s ninth novel. In their citation for the award, the judges described No Road to Paradise as “a marvelous psychological novel that penetrates the enigmas of time and man in a religious society,” adding that: “Daoud’s evocation of a character enclosed in his existence in a southern Lebanese village is subtle and profound. “The work’s insights are Proustian in their precision. Each paragraph is like a wafer-thin cross-section of reality, so simply presented that the problems and questions that each action raises are exposed in all their complexity through narration reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway’s narration and short, crisp sentences that conceal more than they reveal. “The author quietly weaves the climax, so that…
Prominent Lebanese Writer Awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
December 20, 2015
