流亡英国的叙利亚女作家萨马尔·亚兹贝克获得本年度品特文学奖de英勇作家奖

流亡英国的叙利亚女作家萨马尔·亚兹贝克(Samar Yazbek)与英国桂冠诗人卡罗尔·安·达菲(Carol Ann Duffy)一起分享了2012年度品特文学奖(Pen Pinter Literary Prize)。桂冠诗人达菲已于2012年7月获颁品特文学奖。该项奖励中还有一项“英勇作家奖”(the Writer of Courage Award)是专门奖励国际上那些遭受迫害但依然勇敢反抗,坚持自己的信仰,敢于发出声音的作家的。获选作家由已经获得品特文学奖的作家提名。萨马尔·亚兹贝克因而获此殊荣。以下是BBC提供的相关介绍:

Syrian writer Samar Yazbek to share Pinter prize

Exiled Syrian author Samar Yazbek is to share this year’s Pen Pinter literary prize with poet Carol Ann Duffy.

The author has been a vocal critic of President Assad’s regime

Yazbek is being recognised for her book A Woman In The Crossfire, which is based on diaries she kept during the early stages of the Syrian conflict.

It details how her outspoken views against President Assad’s government led to persecution, and her decision to flee Syria with her young daughter.

Duffy, who is Poet Laureate, was named the winner of the main prize in July.

The annual award – in memory of the playwright Harold Pinter – is given to a British writer of outstanding literary merit.

The winner then chooses a recipient for the Writer Of Courage Award, which recognises an international writer who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs.

Duffy was given a shortlist by the English Pen Writers At Risk Committee, and made her announcement at the British Library on Monday night.

Yazbek said: “I am grateful to English Pen, and to Carol Ann Duffy, for selecting this book, and through it, for supporting our cause.”

Lady Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter’s widow, added: “Carol Ann Duffy’s recognition of Samar Yazbek’s courage in writing about Syria’s revolution from the inside could not come at a more appropriate time”.

‘Raw passion’

Born in 1970, Yazbek comes from the same Alawite clan as President Bashar al-Assad.

Prior to the uprising, she wrote extensively on women’s issues in newspapers and journals, while challenging taboos in her novels.

Her second novel Salsal (Clay) cast a critical eye over the power of the military, while Cinnamon – which is due to be published in the UK next month – looks at the social divide in Syria through the prism of a servant who enters into a lesbian relationship with her employer.

When protests against the Syrian government began last March, she voiced her support online. She received hate mail, her family disowned her and, eventually, she was arrested and shown the cells she would be kept in, if she continued to support the rebels.

After further intimidation, she fled to Paris in July 2011 – although she has said: “I return all the time, but in secrecy. Undercover.”

Woman In The Crossfire tells the story of the first few months of the uprising, via her own story and testimony from ordinary Syrians.

The Spectator praised the book’s “uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital”, while the Washington Post said it “brought the cause of the opposition – and its raw human passion for liberation – into focus”.

The UN estimates that more than 20,000 people have died in the conflict in Syria, while hundreds of thousands more have fled over the country’s borders.

Tensions with neighbouring Turkey have escalated over the last week, after Syrian mortar rounds landed in the Turkish town of Akcakale, killing five.

 

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