(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah has landed the Arab world's top fiction prize for his novel The Second War of the Dog, a dystopian tale of inhumanity.
Nasrallah's work won the 11th International Prize for Arab Fiction (IPAF), affiliated with the Man Booker Prize, at a ceremony on Tuesday hosted by the UAE. 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 in Abu Dhabi. The prize includes $50,000 and funding to translate the work into English
Speaking on the occasion, Al Saafin said: "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, said: "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 then 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.
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 received from 14 countries.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction is an annual literary prize for 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.
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