UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PRESS ANNOUNCES TRANSLATION AWARD

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and the University of Arkansas Press announce this year's Arkansas Translation Award winner: Yasmeen Hanoosh, for her translation of Scattered Crumbs (al-Fatit al-Muba'thar) by Iraqi novelist Muhsin al-Ramli. Hanoosh is an Iraqi-born graduate student at the University of Michigan, and al-Ramli lives in Spain. The judges considered works of prose and poetry by authors from throughout the Arab world and diaspora.

Scattered Crumbs was originally published in Cairo in the late 1990s. Set in an unnamed Iraqi village, the novella describes an impoverished peasant family struggling under totalitarian dictatorship during the Iran-Iraq war. Translator Hanoosh says that the novella "evokes the processes of deterioration undergone both by the country and by the individual characters caught up in the maelstrom." Her translation captures the subtle sarcasm of the original text.

The Arkansas Translation Award was established to support and to publish fine translations of important Arabic writing. The prize includes $5000 for the translator, $5000 for the original author, and publication. The University of Arkansas Press will publish Scattered Crumbs in the fall of 2004.

For further information, please contact Joel Gordon (jgordon@uark.edu) . Submissions guidelines for the 2004 Arkansas Translation Award are posted on the University of Arkansas Press's Web site: www.uapress.com.

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Laura Helper, marketing director, University of Arkansas Press, (479) 575-6657, lhelper@uark.edu