Founded by English PEN in 2019 after the late British playwright Harold Pinter, the PEN Pinter Prize honours ‘fierce’ and ‘fearless’ writers with an ‘unflinching’ gaze on the contemporary socio-political scene. This year, Leila Aboulela, a Sudanese-Scottish writer, is the winner of the PEN Pinter Prize. Writing in the spirit of Pinter, Aboulela will receive the prize on October 10, which happens to be Pinter’s birth anniversary. In the ceremony at the British Library, she will also announce the Writer of Courage, also known as the Pinter International Writer of Courage.

      The Pinter Award is given to a writer of British origin or a British resident. One has to have a literary merit; sober won’t do, would it? Pinter in his Nobel speech, ‘Art, Truth and Politics’ envisioned a race of writers ‘unflinching, unswerving’ with their ‘intellectual determination… to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.’ Sharing the honour with an International Writer of Courage who, by definition, has been ‘persecuted for speaking about his/her beliefs.’ Leila Aboulela, a writer of Sudanese origin, moved to Scotland in 1990. Spending a larger part of her life in Sudan, her novels are chiefly based on the experiences of Muslim immigrants. The hardships of Aboulela’s transition have been depicted in her writings. Till now, she has written six novels and multiple short stories. Her works, Minaret (2005) and The Translator (1999), are portrayals of Muslim women in the UK coupled with political upheavals. Both were nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize.

       Sprawled with the themes of identity, multi-culturalism, migration and the Orient and Occident divide, Aboulela’s work has been celebrated by J.M. Coetzee, Ben Okri and Smith.  Moving further, River Spirit (2023) was praised by Abdulrazak Gurnah for ‘extraordinary sympathy and insight.’ What’s more interesting is that Aboulela’s first novel, The Translator (1999), is a Muslim retelling of Jane Austen’s Jane Eyre. What can be a more remarkable tribute to Austen, who completes 250 years this December!