Palestinian writer Basim Khandakji, jailed in Israel 20 years ago, wins top fiction prize
Khandakji’s book was selected out of 133 works submitted in the competition.
Tel Aviv, Israel:
Bassim Khandakji, a Palestinian writer jailed in Israel 20 years ago, won a prestigious Arabic fiction prize on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
The 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
Rana Idris, owner of the book’s Lebanon-based publisher Dar al-Adab, accepted the award on Khandakji’s behalf.
Khandakji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and imprisoned on charges related to a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education via the Internet from inside prison.
The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nour, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, found in the pocket of an Israeli’s old coat.
Khandakji’s book was selected out of 133 works submitted in the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “highlights a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide and racism”.
Since being jailed, Khandakji has written collections of poetry, including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem”.
He has also written three novels before.
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