This year, the organizers initiated a special category named “Forty Years of the Sacred Defense Fiction” to honor the authors of the foremost stories created about the war over the past four decades.
One of the writers is Habib Ahmadzadeh, the author of the acclaimed novel “Chess with the Doomsday Machine” and a book of short stories, “A City Under Siege”.
Hamid Hesam, the Islamic Revolution Artist of the Year in 2018, is another author picked by the organizers. He is the author of “When the Moonlight Was Missing”, “Just Be a Servant of Hussein” and “Immigrant from the Land of the Sun”.
Also included are Ahmad Dehqan, one of Iran’s foremost war writers and the author of “A Vital Killing” and “Bearing 270 Degrees”, Mohammadreza Bayrami, the writer of the acclaimed novella “Barren”, and Rahim Makhdumi, the author of “The Entry-Forbidden Commanders”, which is a compilation of stories from 30 Iranian commanders.
Davud Amirian, Golali Babai, Akbar Sahrai, Davud Ghaffarzadegan, Qassemali Ferasat, Majid Qeisari, and Ali Moazzeni are other top writers of this section.
The organizers selected the writers during a poll of 19 journalists and representatives of the media active in the literature arena.
This program has been designed to highlight the high position of the Sacred Defense in the history of contemporary Iranian literature.
Ebrahim Mohammad Hassanbeigi, Hamid Hessam, Mohammadreza Sharafi-Khabushan, Mostafa Jamshidi, Ali Changizi, Abolfazl Horri, Morteza Sarhangi, Maryam Moshref, and Mohammadreza Bayrami are the members of the selecting committee for the prize.
Ebrahim Hassanbeigi is also collaborating as the academic secretary.
Source: Tehran Times