Emirati novelist Reem Alkamali has been shortlisted for the Brics Literature Award, alongside writers from Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt.
The 10 shortlisted authors were announced in Jakarta, at the HB Jassin Literary Documentation Centre. The winner will be announced on November 27 in Khabarovsk, Russia.
The award, founded in 2024 at the Brics Traditional Values forum in Moscow, honours contemporary writing that reflects the cultural and spiritual heritage of the participating countries. It also promotes translation and publishing to encourage cross-cultural exchange.
The UAE’s participation is represented by Alkamali and literary critic Dr Maryam Al Hashmi, who serves on the award jury. Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, political scientist and member of the organising committee, described Alkamali’s shortlisting as “recognition of her originality and dedication to creative writing”.
Alkamali's novel Rose's Diary was the first Emirati novel to be nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2022.
Her previous works include 2013’s The Sultanate of Hormuz, which won the 2015 Owais Prize for Creativity, and 2018’s The Statue of Dalma, which won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity.
In Rose's Diary, Alkamali takes readers to Dubai’s Shindagha neighbourhood of the 1960s, before the formation of the UAE. After the death of her mother, Rose’s uncle refuses to allow her to travel to Damascus to study Arabic Literature. Angry and frustrated, she unleashes her torrent of emotions in a secret diary where she deals with existential issues about the direction of her life, in addition to exploring social and traditional norms.
In an interview published on Ipaf's website, Alkamali said the novel was inspired by prior generations of Emirati women writers.
“We don’t deny that there were female poets. There were many poetesses in the Emirates of the 60s who declaimed their poems in the genres of eulogy, flirtation, rebuke, love and description of beauty, but these were oral poems and were not written down until the '80s,” she said.
“But what about creative fiction in the '60s, which was not poetry? Where was the written down literary story in that period? It was absent, despite the existence of schools, university study trips abroad, the encouragement of education and freedom to choose specialisms.
“For this reason, I gave Rose, who did not go on a university trip, an active imagination and made her absorbed by her notebooks.”
The Brics Literature Award aims to provide a platform for writers from emerging nations and to broaden global literary dialogue beyond traditional western frameworks.
