The international committee of the Cavafy Literary Competition has announced that novelist Ahdaf Soueif, poet Amin Haddad and translator Beshir El-Seba’ae have won prizes awarded by the Greek embassy in Cairo in cooperation with the Greek Cultural Centre.

The committee has also granted Refaat Sallam — who translated the complete works of Cavafy— a discretionary prize. The Greek poet Cavafy was born, lived and died in Egypt. He is considered one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century. 

There are two committees associated with the Cavafy Awards. One is Egyptian, headed by the foreign relations sector chief in the Ministry of Culture, Sahar Al-Mogy, English literature professor at Cairo University; and Amina Rashid, comparative literature professor in the French Language Department at Cairo University. The other is an independent Greek committee that gives awards to Greek authors and poets. 

The Greek committee granted the Cavafy Award to the Greek poet George Gronas and to Demetrius Stefanakis. The committee decided also to give a discretionary award to Stefanos Geroulanos for his contributions in publishing Cavafy’s works.