Award winner "Literary appreciation": Sharjah is an open space to discover commonalities between cultures

Sharjah, 15 January / WAM / Zimbabwean writer and novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga, winner of the Sharjah Literary Appreciation Award, confirmed that the best honor for a writer lies in the widening of his influence on readers and the growth of their base across cultures, explaining that the true value of literature lies in its ability to build dialogue and shared knowledge.

She pointed out that the Sharjah African Literature Festival embodies this role as an effective platform for cultural communication between writers and readers from diverse backgrounds.

This came during a special session entitled “A Whole Life Between Words… A Dialogue with Tsitsi Dangarembga” within the activities of the second session of the Sharjah African Literature Festival, which is organized by the Sharjah Book Authority until January 18 in the University City of Sharjah.

Dangarembga said that the Sharjah African Literature Festival is gaining great importance as a space that allows communication, dialogue, and the search for commonalities between cultures, explaining that this type of meeting reveals different forms of knowledge that are applicable on the ground, which contributes to improving the ways people think and deal with the world and with each other.

When Dangarembga was asked what it means to her to reflect on the honors she has received, the most recent of which was the “Sharjah Literary Appreciation Award,” she said that the real value of the award lies in the recognition that her work connects her with readers from different cultures.

She said that during her visit to Sharjah, she had a distinguished dialogue with Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, noting that this will remain an experience firmly in her memory, which confirms that the purpose of sharing her experience with others has been achieved.

Dangarembga explained that she is working to enhance the presence of customs and traditions and talk about ties of kinship and kinship and return them to the core of literature, based on her conviction that a person always lives between a world to which he belongs and the small and extended family and the family heritage and roots connected to the ancestors.

In a related context, the activities of the first day of the festival hosted a dialogue session entitled “Sand, Sea, and Narrative,” during which the Emirati writer Ali Al Shaali and Dr. Saada Omar Wahab, author of the book Cultural Heritage and Identity in Zanzibar, spoke and discussed the relationship between place and narrative and the presence of physical geography and memory in narrative formation.

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