Ahmad Mahmoud Awards Announced

The first edition of Ahmad Mahmoud Literary Award, organized by a group of writers and named after the prominent Persian novelist, announced winners in a ceremony held on December 25 in Tehran.   During a ceremony at the Iranian Artists Forum, the award for best short story collection went jointly to ‘No Wind, No Paddle’ by Fariba Vafa and ‘We Will Return This Very Night’ by Peyman Esmaeili. Reza Jolaei’s ‘An Old Case’ won the literary award for the best novel of the year, ISNA reported. Released by Cheshmeh Publication, ‘No wind, No Paddle’ consists of 12 short stories, most of which focus on women who have broken free of the suppression exerted by dominant and truculent husbands and fathers. ‘We Will Return This Very Night’ is a collection of five short stories with  fear, loneliness and migration as main themes. It portrays lonely people who, far from their homeland, struggle with their emotional and psychological problems. This title was also brought out by Cheshmeh Publication. The thriller-cum-historical novel ‘An Old File’, published by Aamout Publication, revolves around the assassination of Iranian writer and journalist Mohammad Masoud in 1948.  Ahmad E’ta (1931-2002), better known with his pen name, Ahmad Mahmoud, was a prominent Iranian novelist. His work ‘The Neighbors’ stands out as one of the most notable novels in modern Persian Literature.