Ibrahim Nasrallah wins
2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction
www.arabicfiction.org
|#ArabicFiction2018
·
His novel, The Second War of
the Dog, is set in a future world
The
Second War of the Dog by Ibrahim
Nasrallah was tonight, Tuesday 24 April 2018, announced as the winner of
the 11th International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).
The
novel, published by Arab Scientific Publishers, was
named as this year’s winner by the Chair of Judges, Ibrahim Al Saafin, at a
ceremony at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr in Abu Dhabi. In addition to winning
$50,000, funding will be provided for the English translation of The
Second War of the Dog, and Ibrahim Nasrallah
can expect an increase in book sales and international recognition.
The
Chair of Judges, Ibrahim Al Saafin, says:
‘The
Second War of the Dog is a masterful vision of a dystopian future in a
nameless country, using fantasy and science fiction techniques. With humour and
insight, it exposes the tendency towards brutality inherent in society,
imagining a time where human and moral values have been discarded and anything
is permissible, even the buying and selling of human souls.’
The
novel focuses on the corrupt main character, Rashid, who changes from an
opponent of the regime to a materialistic and unscrupulous extremist. Nasrallah
reveals the intrinsic savagery in human beings, as he describes a futuristic
world where greed intensifies and human values and ethics are ignored.
Professor
Yasir Suleiman, Chair of the Board of IPAF Trustees, comments:
‘Ibrahim
Nasrallah’s novel paints a chilling picture of humanity in all its destructive
potential. Without a moral compass, the protagonist lets go of the normal
bounds that constrain human behaviour. Nasrallah expertly draws the reader into
this world from different vantage points, using crisp language in which
humour makes the moral burden of relating to the main character “bearable”, or
just so. His win is an accolade well-deserved.’
Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954
to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948. He spent his
childhood in the Alwehdat Palestinian Refugee Camp in Amman, Jordan and began
his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he
worked as a journalist and for the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation. Since 2006,
he has been a full-time writer and has acted as a mentor to emerging writers at
IPAF’s annual nadwa (writers’ workshop), in 2014 and 2016.
Four
of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English,
including: Time of White
Horses, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for
Arabic Fiction in 2009; and
Lanterns of the King of Galilee, longlisted in 2013. In a 2012
review of Time of White Horses, the New Statesman praised
Nasrallah’s “intensely eloquent voice [that] gives Western audiences an insight
into the lives of the marginalised”.
After
his shortlisting, Ibrahim Nasrallah said in an exclusive film for IPAF:
‘The
novel was written to provoke the reader, to worry the reader, to even,
sometimes, make them breathless. The Second War of the Dog is, in my
opinion, a warning of what we could become in the future …The novel starts off
at the moment of a loss of certainty, that loss of trust in those whom you
interact closely with – that neighbour, brother, father, or whoever it may be.
The novel suggests that if we continue on our current path, we will reach a
future where we would become mostly annihilistic.’
The
Second War of the Dog was chosen by the IPAF judges as the best work of
fiction published between July 2016 and June 2017 from 124 entries from 14
countries. Alongside chair Ibrahim Al Saafin, who is a Jordanian
academic, critic, poet, novelist and playwright, the 2018 judges were: Inam
Bioud, an Algerian academic, translator, novelist and poet; Jamal Mahjoub, a
Sudanese-English writer and novelist; Mahmoud Shukair, a Palestinian short
story writer and novelist; and Barbara Skubic, a Slovenian writer and
translator.
The
five shortlisted finalists, Amir Tag Elsir, Aziz Mohammed, Shahad Al Rawi,
Walid Shurafa and Dima Wannous were also honoured at the ceremony, each
receiving $10,000. Ahead of the announcement, the shortlisted authors took part
in an event at the National Theatre in Abu Dhabi hosted by the Emirates Writers
Union and NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, and chaired by Sudanese novelist Ann El
Safi. Walid Shurafa also spoke about his shortlisted novel Heir of
the Tombstones at the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery in connection with an
exhibition Permanent Temporariness, which focuses on the lives of
Palestinian refugees.
Ibrahim
Nasrallah will participate in his first public event as the winner of the
Prize, alongside the five shortlisted authors, on 25 April, the opening day of
the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The event will run from 7-9.30pm at the
Sea of Culture Foundation Stand (12B36), under the patronage of Sheikha Sheikha
bint Mohammed bin Khalid Al Nahyan.
Fulfilling
its ambition to increase the international reach of Arabic fiction, the Prize
provides funding for English translation for its winners. This year has seen
the publication of 2014 winner Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad by
Oneworld in the UK and Penguin Books in the US. The novel has been widely and
positively reviewed: “brave and ingenious,” by The New York Times and
“hallucinatory and hilarious … and remarkable” by the Guardian. Its
translation rights have been sold for a further 14 languages including Cantonese and Mandarin, and its English
translation was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in April
2018. In March 2018, 2016 winner Rabai al-Madhoun’s Fractured
Destinies was published by Hoopoe Fiction.
Other
winners already available in English include Baha Taher’s Sunset Oasis
in 2009 and Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel in 2012. English translations of
Abdo Khal’s Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles and Mohammed Achaari’s
The Arch and the Butterfly were published in 2014. Saud Alsanousi’s The
Bamboo Stalk was published in 2015 and Raja Alem’s novel, The Dove’s
Necklace, in 2016.
The
translation rights for two of the books on this year’s shortlist have already
been sold. Shahad Al Rawi’s The Baghdad Clock
has been translated by Luke Leafgren and will be published in May by
Oneworld Publications. Dima Wannous’ The Frightened Ones has been
translated by Elisabeth Jacquette and will be published in 2019 in the UK by
Harvill Secker and in the US by Knopf Doubleday. From the 2017 shortlist, In
the Spider’s Room by Mohammed Abdel Nabi has been translated into English
by Jonathan Wright and will be published by Hoopoe Fiction in July.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction is an
annual literary prize for prose fiction in Arabic. It is run with the support,
as its mentor, of the Booker Prize Foundation in London and sponsored by the
Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi).
For further information about the Prize, please visit www.arabicfiction.org or follow the Prize on Facebook @InternationalPrizeforArabicFiction
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