Nawal El Saadawi

The egyptian writer, doctor and activist Nawal El Saadawi is the recipient of The Stig Dagerman Award 2012.

The prize ceremony has taken place at Stora Hallen, Laxön in Älvkarleby, Sweden, Saturday the 19th of May at 1 p m.

The Stig Dagerman Prize /Stig Dagermanpriset/ is a Swedish award given since 1996 by The Stig Dagerman Society and the municipality of Älvkarleby, situated 160 km north of Stockholm on the east coast. The prize is named in honour of Swedish author Stig Dagerman (1923-1954). The award is given to a person who, or an organization that, in the spirit of Dagerman supports the significance and the availability of the free word, the freedom of speech.

The prize is inspired by Dagerman’s poem En dag om året that sets forward a vision of piece and humanity by imagining one day each year when the world is free from injustice and violence.

Warda

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Warda Al-Jazairia (Arabic: وردة الجزائرية‎), July 1939 – May 17, 2012 was an Algerian singer.

Biography
Warda was born in Paris, France, to a Lebanese Mother and Algerian father. She started singing at the age of eleven in 1951. She quickly became well known for her singing of patriotic Algerian songs. When she married in 1962, however, her husband forbade her to sing. In 1972, Algerian president Houari Boumédienne asked her to sing to commemorate Algeria’s independence, and she performed with an Egyptian orchestra. As a result her marriage broke up, and she dedicated her life to music.
She then moved to Egypt, where she married the composer Baligh Hamdi. She performed many of his songs and those of other Arabic composers, quickly rising to fame and releasing several albums per year. Additionally, she has starred in a few films.
“Warda” is a female name of Arabic origin meaning “Rose”.
At the height of Panarabism, Gamal Abdel Nasser requested that Warda be given a part in a production by Mohammad Abdelwahhab entitled My Great Homeland (Watani Al-Akbar). The song was performed by the biggest stars at the time including Abdel Halim Hafez, Shadia, Sabah (singer), Nagat Al-Saghira and Faida Kamel. The song denounced Colonialism and urged for a united Arab People to defeat foreign occupation (see Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire).
Warda died on May 17, 2012, in Cairo, Egypt, after suffering a cardiac arrest; she was 72 years old.

Source: Wikipedia.org