At a ceremony held on Monday the American University in Cairo Press announced that this year's winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature is Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh for her novel Sura wa Ayquna wa 'Ahadun Qadim (An Image, An Icon and a Covenant). The award jury comprised professors Hoda Wasfi, Samia Mehrez and Abdel-Moneim Tallima, distinguished critics Ibrahim Fathi and Fakhri Saleh, and AUC Press director Mark Linz. The event marked the end of a week-long commemoration of Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's late Nobel laureate in literature, that coincided with the 95th anniversary of his birth. Present at the ceremony were Mahfouz's widow and two daughters. During the award ceremony novelist Yusuf Abu Rayya was also presented with the English translation, by Neil Hewison, of his novel Wedding Night, which won last year's Naguib Mahfouz Medal. The Sawiris Foundation Awards for Egyptian Literature, for the novel and short story, were announced during a ceremony held on 6 December. The prize for best novel went to Mohamed El-Mansi Qandil for Qamar 'Ala Samarqand (Moon on Samarkand) while Ibrahim Aslan's Hikayat Min Fadlallah 'Uthman (Stories from Fadlallah Uthman Street) won the prize for the best collection of short stories. The jury for this section, which selected work from established writers, were Farouq Abdel-Qadir, Galal Amin, Mohamed Berari, Hussein Hammouda and Farida El-Naqqash. In the section devoted to authors at the beginning of their careers the first prize for the novel went to Hamdi El-Gazzar's Sihr Aswad (Black Magic), the second to Ahmed El-Aidi's An Takun 'Abbas Al-Abd ( Being Abbas al-Abd ). The first prize for best short story collection was awarded to Mustafa Zikri's Mir'a 202 (Mirror 202), the second to Wail El-Ashri's Sa'am New York (New York Ennui) by a jury that comprised Ibrahim Aslan, Said El-Kafrawi, Menha El-Batrawi, Iman Ezzeddin and Sahar El-Mougi.
