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FATEMA
MERNISSI AND SUSAN SONTAG, PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR
LETTERS 2003
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The writers Fatema Mernissi and Susan Sontag have
been given the 2003 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters
in its XXIII edition. The decision of the jury
responsible for awarding the honour was made public in
Oviedo.
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The jury for this award - convened by the Prince of
Asturias Foundation - was chaired by Víctor García de la
Concha, and comprised of Andrés Amorós, Luis María
Anson, J.J. Armas Marcelo, Blanca Berasátegui, Isabel
Carrera, Pedro Casals, Antonio Colinas, Fernando
Delgado, Francisco Javier Fernández Vallina, José Luis
García Martín, Pilar García Mouton, Emilio González
Ferrín, Fernando de Lanzas Sánchez del Corral, Rosa
Navarro Durán, Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente, Fernando
Sánchez Dragó and José María Martínez Cachero
(secretary).
Fatema Mernissi was born in Fez
(Morocco) in 1940. She studied Political Science and,
with a scholarship from the Sorbonne, earned her
doctorate from Brandeis University (USA). Mernissi is
one of Arab intellectualism's most eloquent voices and a
world authority on Koranic studies.
A prolific
author who has been translated into several languages,
her first book, "The Veil and the Male Élite: A Feminist
Interpretation of Islam", is a historical study
narrating the key role of the wives of Mahomet. As do
all her books, "Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with
Moroccan Women" (1991) - in which she interviews peasant
women, women labourers, clairvoyants and maidservants -
sets out to defend women. This defence is founded upon
on a humanistic approach whereby women are encouraged to
take up their role in society and to fight by using the
power of language, the main weapon, in her view, for
achieving equality and deep-seated change. She presented
"Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World" in
Madrid in 1992, and her autobiography, "Dreams of
Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood", came out in 1995.
Other works include "Forgotten Queens of Islam",
"Scheherazade is not a Moroccan", and "Islam, Gender and
Social Change", which are considered classics of
contemporary literature and an intellectual benchmark by
which to understand the Arab world.
Fatema
Mernissi is a lecturer at the Mohamed V University of
Rabat, and a research scholar at the University
Institute for Scientific Research, in the same
city.
Susan Sontag (New York, 1933) has Arts
degrees from the universities of Chicago and Harvard.
She published her first novel, "The Benefactor", in
1963, followed shortly after by "Against Interpretation"
(1966). She was posted to Vietnam as a war correspondent
in 1968, and was profoundly affected by the conflict.
She has a long-standing interest in the cinema, and
travelled to Sweden, where she made "Duet for Cannibals"
(1969) and "Brother Carl" (1971), whilst also writing
such books as "Trip to Hanoi" (1968) and "Styles of
Radical Will" (1969).
She wrote "Under the Sign
of Saturn" in 1972 (it was published in 1980), and
filmed the Israeli troops during the Middle East War,
directing a film called "Promised Lands" in The Golan
Heights. She wrote "Illness as Metaphor", whilst ill
from cancer, and published "AIDS and its Metaphors" in
1989. She has written on the cinema and theatre and has
edited selected texts of Roland Barthes and Antonin
Artaud. "The Volcano Lover" came out in 1992, and she
travelled to Sarajevo the following year to give class
at the Academy of Drama and to stage "Waiting for Godot"
(in collaboration with other intellectuals). Her last
novel "In America" (1999) has been granted the National
Book Award in USA and the Jerusalem Prize.
In
1993 she co-founded the International Parliament of
Writers, and in 1994 she received the Montblanc Prize
for her cultural work in Bosnia.
These
candidatures were nominated by the University of Seville
(Spain) and by Carlos Fuentes, 1994 Prince of Asturias
Award for Letters.
As laid down in the
Foundation's statutes, the Prince of Asturias Awards aim
to recognise and reward 'scientific, technical,
cultural, social and humanistic work performed by
individuals, groups or institutions world-wide'.
Consonant with this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award
for Letters 'will be bestowed upon the individual, work
group or institution whose creative work or research
represents a significant contribution to the fields of
Literature or Linguistics.'
This year a total of
42 candidatures from Argentina, Armenia, Canada,
Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, France, India, Italy, Lebanon,
Morocco, Mexico, Holland, Peru, Poland, Portugal,
Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America and
Spain ran for the award.
This is the second of
the eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be awarded in
what will be their XXIII edition. Next weeks the awards
(in chronological order) for Social Sciences, Technical
and Scientific Research, Sports, the Arts and
International Co-operation will be awarded. The Concord
award will be awarded this September.
Each of
the Prince of Asturias Awards, first granted in 1981, is
endowed with 50000 Euro, a sculpture especially made for
the occasion donated by Joan Miró, a diploma and
insignia. The awards will be presented in the autumn in
Oviedo at a solemn ceremony presided over by H.R.H. the
Prince of Asturias.
The Prince of Asturias
Foundation was created in 1980 in the course of a solemn
ceremony presided over by Their Majesties the King and
Queen of Spain, Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía, and by
H.R.H. Don Felipe, the Prince of Asturias, Heir to the
Spanish Crown.
The Foundation, whose Honorary
President is H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias, is a
non-profit institution whose aims are to further
consolidate the existing ties between the Prince and the
Principality of Asturias, and the promotion of Sciences,
Technology, Arts and Letters. Its governing body, the
Foundation Committee, is made up of the people and
institutions that created the Institution. In addition,
it is supported by the Prince of Asturias Committee, the
Foundation's main financial backbone, whose members
include practically all the large companies in
Spain.
Previous Prince of Asturias Award for
Letters award-winners were Günter Grass, Camilo José
Cela or Mario Vargas Llosa, Doris Lessing and Arthur
Miller, among others. |
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