Novel by Palestinian Prisoner Basim Khandaqji Wins 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction

APRIL 28, 2024 — Judges today announced the winner of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction: Basim Khandaqji’s قناع بلون السماء (A Mask, the Color of the Sky).

The announcement was made in Abu Dhabi, on the eve of the city’s annual book fair, by this year’s chair of judges, Nabil Suleiman.

As Khandaqji is serving three consecutive life sentences in an Israeli prison, the award was accepted by the owner of his Lebanon-based publishing house, Dar al-Adab. This is Khandaqji’s fourth novel, all of them conceived and written prison. As Khandaqji has been in prison since he was 21, in 2004, his research challenges were complicated. In an interview with IPAF organizers, the author’s brother Yussef said that he “based his novel on his reading of research and studies about Palestinian history, including eyewitness accounts of some of the prisoners inside and outside prisons, especially the Palestinians living inside Israel. Among them is the Palestinian historian Dr. Johnny Mansour, who gave Basim information about the village of Lajjun and kibbutz Mish’ar Ha’imek and the Roman Sixth Legion.”

The novel follows Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, who finds a blue identity card belonging to an Israeli in the pocket of an old coat. After this, the archaeologist develops a secret, doubled identity as “Ur.”

Nabil Suleiman, chair of the 2024 panel of judges, said in a prepared statement:

A Mask, the Colour of the Sky fuses the personal with the political in innovative ways. It ventures into experimenting with new narrative forms to explore three types of consciousness: that of the self, the Other, and the world. It dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism. The strands of history, myth, and the present day are delicately woven together in a narrative that pulses with compassion in the face of dehumanisation, and is stirred by a desire for freedom from oppression, both at an individual and societal level. A Mask, the Colour of the Sky declares love and friendship as central to human identity above all other affiliations.

Khandaqji’s brother said that while it took his brother six months to write the novel, the research “took several years in difficult and complicated circumstances, as Basim was inside various prisons, moving from one prison to another because of the arbitrary measures taken by the prison service administration. Occasionally he would lose some of the information he had collected because a prison guard destroyed it.”

Yussef added that his brother usually tries to write between five and seven in the morning:

He writes before the prison administration counts the prisoners, and before the prison guard starts making a racket, which he is adept at finding new ways of doing. In these two hours, Basim writes approximately two pages, and very often the papers are taken from him and destroyed by the guard. Here of course I don’t mean that this happens only to Basim. It happens to all the prisoners who are writing while in detention.

In a review-essay in 7iber, the author’s brother is quoted as saying that Khandaqji learned about his shortlisting by chance. “They did not have radios. On the second day, the Hebrew media launched an incitement campaign against him, so the prison administration decided to isolate him and impose a fine because he smuggled the pages of the novel out of prison, even though the novel came out in full view of the prison administration, through the mail.”

Khandaqji wrote short stories as a teen, until his imprisonment as a young man. He continued writing in prison and published several collections of poetry, including Rituals of the First Time (2010); The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem (2013); The Narcissus of Isolation (2017), as well as novels, including The Eclipse of Badr al-Din (2019); The Breath of a Woman Let Down (2020); and A Mask, the Color of the Sky (2023). This novel is the first in a planned trilogy.

Khandaqji earned his bachelor’s degree from Al-Quds Open University, then his Master’s from Al-Quds University in 2023. He was preparing to enroll in a doctoral program at an Algerian university, but this plan was halted due to the war on Gaza, the author’s brother told 7iber.

The other novels shortlisted for the 2024 prize were Bahbel: Makkah Multiverse 1945-2009 by Raja Alem, Suleima’s Ring by Rima Bali, The Seventh Heaven of Jerusalem by Osama Al-Eissa, Gambling on the Honor of Lady Mitsy by Ahmed Al-Morsi, and The Mosaicist by Eissa Nasiri. The other prize judges were  Sonia Nimr, František Ondráš, Mohamed Shoair, and Hammour Ziada.

The authors of the shortlisted novels are awarded USD$10,000, and the winner’s prize is a further USD$50,000.