Jalal Al-e Ahmad Literary Awards wraps up with no winner

TEHRAN,Nov.25(MNA) – Like the 2012 edition, organizers of the 6th Jalal Al-e Ahmad Literary Awards did not select a winner this year. The award, named after the prominent Iranian writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969), is Iran’s most lucrative literary award. Each winner in the four categories of fiction, historiography, document completion and literary review receives 110 Bahar Azadi gold coins worth about 1 billion rials (over $33,000). The ceremony for the event took place in the Research Center for Art, Culture and Architecture attended by Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, Deputy Culture Minister for Cultural Affairs Seyyed Abbas Salehi, members of the academic board of the award and a group of literary figures on Saturday. Over 4000 works were submitted to the secretariat, out of which 39 works were selected for the final judgment, secretary of the event Mahmud Fotuhi said at the ceremony. Rasul Jafarian, Abbas Salimi Namin, Mohammad-Kazem Beigi, Ahmad Shakeri and Manuchehr Akbari were among the members of academic board that did not choose a winner this year. However, the book “Stylistics of Theory, Methods and Approaches” by Mahmud Fotuhi was honored in the literary review section. In historiography, two books “Socialists and Commons” by Sohrab Yazdani and “Sha’banieh Intifada” by Shafaeddin Tabraiian were jointly honored. The book “Tariqolqods Battle” by Amir Razzaqzadeh was honored in the document completion section.