Arab Booker nominees announced

The nominees for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (commonly known as the Arab Booker, because it's partly managed by the Booker Prize Foundation) have been announced. The prize was launched in 2007 and the winners so far have been Baha' Taher for Sunset Oasis and Youssef Zeidan for Azazel. Taher's work is available in English and Zeidan's will come out in English next year--one of the $50,000 prize's goals is to encourage translation of Arabic literature. The press release says that this year:

There were 115 eligible submissions, from 17 Arab countries - Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia and Algeria.

The long list of nominees after the jump.