This year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction popularly known as the Arabic Booker has been won by The Second War of the Dog, a novel Palestinian novelist and poet, Ibrahim Nasrallah. His novel was up against 124 nominations from 14 Arab countries. He is the second Palestinian novelist to win this prize, following Rabai al-Madhoun, who scooped the ninth edition of the award in 2016 for his work Concerto of the Holocaust and the Nakba.
Ibrahim Al Saafin, academic, critic, and one of the award’s jury members was at the opening ceremony of Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, and said: “The novel addresses the transformations of society and reality through the genres of fantasy sci-fi, focusing on the distortion of society and the savage trend to sacrifice people’s lives. This is rooted in a lack of moral and ethical values.”
In addition to a translation opportunity of his novel into English, Ibrahim Nasrallah has received USD 50,000 as prize. Five other shortlisted novelists were honoured, namely, Shahad Al Rawi from Iraq; Amir Taj Al Sar from Sudan; Waleed Al Shurfa from Palestine; Aziz Mohammed from Saudi-Arabia; Dima Wannous from Syria. Each of them was recognised with a cash prize of USD 10,000.