Third time the charm for author Ibrahim Nasrallah
▶ Ibrahim Nasrallah won the 2018 IPAF award for his book about unscrupulous ‘blind extremism and violence’
It was third time lucky for Jordanian-Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah, who had previously been shortlisted and longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Last night, he was declared this year’s winner in a ceremony held in Abu Dhabi.
His novel, The Second War of the Dog, set in a futuristic world that charts the transformation and corruption of a society driven by greed, won the 11th edition of the prize.
“Nothing comes from nothing,” said Nasrallah, as he accepted his prize. “That goes for
The Second War of the Dog; it didn’t come from nothing.
“It came from the suffering that we have been subjected to in this region and this era of occupation, by both a direct enemy and an indirect enemy, as well as the enemy within.”
Nasrallah’s novel exposes the ugly transformations of society by focusing on Rashid, the novel’s corrupt protagonist, who goes from being an opponent of the regime to a materialistic and unscrupulous extremist, uncomfortably revealing the inevitable tendency towards savagery inherent in societies and human beings.
“It is a novel about blind extremism and violence,” Nasrallah said.
Writing this book and examining how greed can intensify in an individual and how human values can be so easily ignored, he said, was not a healing experience.
“As a writer, when you come out of such a writing experience you feel you have added another burden to your frail frame because you have become conscious of this catastrophe we live in and conscious of the suffering of human beings and nature.”
Nasrallah has been shaking the world since 2006, when he left previous careers as a teacher and a journalist to embrace writing full time – and photography and art on the side.
He has since published 14 poetry collections and 16 novels, including his epic fictional project of eight novels covering 250 years of Palestinian history.
Four of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English, including the IPAF-shortlisted novel of
2009, Time of White Horses, as well as Lanterns of the King of Galilee, nominated in 2013. Ibrahim Al Saafin, Jordanian writer, poet, playwright, critic and academic and chair of the panel of judges, applauded Nasrallah’s use of fantasy and science fiction techniques. “The Second War of the Dogs
is a masterful vision of a dystopian future in a nameless country,” Al Saafin said. “With humour and insight, it exposes the tendency towards brutality inherent in society.”
This is certainly intentional, Nasrallah said, and he maintained that what the novel suggested could very well happen: if we continued on our current path, we would reach a future where we would become mostly annihilistic.
“The novel was written to provoke the reader, to worry the reader, to even, sometimes, make them breathless. As writers, we write to shake the world and not to embody its shallowness.”
Al Saafin led a panel of judges that included Algerian novelist and translator Inam Bioud, Sudanese-English novelist Jamal Mahjoub, Palestinian writer Mahmoud Shukair and Slovenian writer and translator Barbara Skubic.
The judges chose The Second
War of the Dog from 124 entries from 14 countries.
As well as the US$50,000 (Dh183,700) cash prize, Nasrallah’s novel will be offered additional funding from the award for an English translation to be published later.
The authors of the five other novels that made the shortlist were each awarded $10,000 (Dh36,700).
Often described as the Arabic Booker, the award is supported and mentored by the Booker Prize Foundation in London and funded by the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi.
Nasrallah and the five shortlisted authors – Amir Tag Elsir from Sudan, Aziz Mohammed from Saudi Arabia, Shahad Al Rawi from Iraq, Walid Al Shurafa from Palestine and Dima Wannous from Syria – will take part in a salon event today on the opening day of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
It will be Nasrallah’s first public appearance as the prize winner.