The novel “A Mask the Color of the Sky” by the Palestinian writer Bassem Khandaqji, who has been imprisoned in Israel for 20 years, won the 17th International Prize for Arab Fiction.
The prize’s Facebook account said the jury chose the winning novel from among 133 novels nominated for this season’s prize, as the best novel published between July 2022 and June 2023.
According to its website, the prize aims to “acknowledge excellence in contemporary Arabic literature, and increase the demand for reading this literature worldwide by inter- the translation of the winning novels that reached the short and long lists into other major languages, and publishing them.”
The publisher of this year’s winning novel, Rana Idris, owner of Dar Al-Adab, received the award on behalf of Khandakji.
Nabil Suleiman, Chairman of the jury said“In “A Mask of the Color of the Sky” the personal and political unite in innovative ways. “
Khandakji is a Palestinian novelist born in the city of Nablus in 1983. He studied journalism and the media at An-Najah National University in Nablus, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004, when he was 21 years old.
He completed his university education from within prison by enrolling at Al-Quds University, where his thesis on Israeli studies was in political science, and he completed his writings in – inside prisons.
Since his imprisonment, he has written collections of poetry, including Rituals of the First Time (2010) and Breaths of a Night Poem (2013), and three novels: Narcissus of Solitude (2017), The Eclipse of Badr al-Din (2019), and Breaths of a Deceived Woman (2020).
Novels by Ahmed Al-Morsi (Egypt), Osama Al-Aissa (Palestine), Raja Alam (Saudi Arabia), Rima Bali (Syria), and Issa Nasseri (Morocco) were shortlisted for the 2024 edition.
The financial value of the prize, given by the Abu Dhabi Center for the Arabic Language, with the support of the Booker Foundation in London, is $50,000, as well as the translation of the winning novel into English, according to Reuters.
Among the most prominent winners of the award, which was launched for the first time in April 2007, are Jordanian Jalal Burgess, Lebanese Hoda Barakat, Palestinian Ibrahim Nasrallah, Iraqi Ahmed Saadawi, and Egyptian Bahaa Taher.
