Ibrahim Nasrallah

Ibrahim Nasrallah the winner of the Arabic Booker Prize (2018), born in Amman-Jordan in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted in 1948 from their homeland. Nasrallah spent his childhood at the Al-Wehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, went to schools at the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), and graduated from its Teacher Training College in Amman. He is a poet, novelist, painter, and a photographer.

To date, Nasrallah has published 14 poetry collections, 23 novels, and 2 film critic books. In 1985, he started writing the Palestinian Tragicomedy covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history in a series of novels in which each novel is an independent one. 13 novels were published in the framework of this project, many of which were awarded the most prestigious literary awards in the Arab world. His works have been translated and published in English, Italian, Danish, Turkish, Spanish, Persian, and other languages. Nasrallah’s books are among the bestselling books in the Arab world, his work has attracted attention among critics and international academia with more than 14 literary critic books and 60 PhD and Maters thesis studying his work.

He won 10 prizes, among them the Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997. His novel Prairies of Fever was chosen by the Guardian newspaper as one of the most important ten novels written by Arabs or non-Arabs about the Arab world. His novel Time of White Horses was shortlisted on the International Prize for Arab Fiction (Arabic Booker Prize) in 2009. His novel The Second Dog War was the Arabic Booker Prize in 2018.

In January 2014, he succeeded in summiting Mount Kilimanjaro in a venture that involved two Palestinian adolescents, a boy and a girl, who have lost their legs. The climb was in support to a nongovernmental organization dedicated to providing medical services to children. He wrote about this journey in a novel entitled The Spirits of Kilimanjaro, he was awarded the Katara Prize for Arabic Novels for this work. In 2020, he became the first Arabic writer to be awarded the Katara Prize for the second time for his novel “A Tank Under the Christmas Tree.”

Poetry:

• Horses are Overlooking the City, 1980.
• The Rain Inside, 1982.
• Morning Songs, 1984.
• No’man Recovers His Color, 1984.
• The Last Dialogue a Few Minutes Before the Killing of the Sparrow, 1984.
• The River Boy and the General, 1987.
• Storms of the Heart, 1989.
• Green Wood, 1991.
• The Fox’s Scandal, 1993 (Published in English).
• Verandahs of Autumn, 1997.
• The Book of Death and the Dead, 1998.
• In the Name of the Mother and the Son, 1999.
• Mirrors of Angels, 2001.
• Flute Chamber, 2007.
• If I Were a Maestro, 2009.
• A Ray of Light Between Two Nights, 2012.
• Love is Wicked, 2017.

Novels:

The Palestinian Comedy: 14 novels covering 250 years of Palestine modern history, each one is a stand-alone fiction, they are:

• Terrestrial Waves, 1988
• Just the Two of Us, Arabic edition 1992
• Birds of Caution, 1996
• Eraser Child, 2000
• Olive Trees of the Streets, 2002
• Safe Weddings, 2004
• Under the Midmorning Sun, 2004
• The Time of White Horses, 2007
• Lanterns of the King of Galilee, 2012
• Spirits of Kilimanjaro, 2015
• Bells Trilogy: Keys’ Shadows, An Autobiography of an Eye, A Tank Under the Christmas Tree, 2019
• My Childhood So Far, 2022

The Balconies: 10 Novels covering modern political and social life in the Arab world, each one is a stand-alone fiction, they are:

• Prairies of Fever, 1985
• The Barking Dog (Aw), 1990
• The Guard of the Lost city, 1998

• Balcony of Delirium, 2005
• Balcony of Snow Man 2009

• Balcony of Disgrace 2010
• Balcony of Abyss, 2013
• Balcony of Paradise, 2014
• The Second Dog War, 2016
• Short Sorties Writer’s Tragedy, 2021

Other publications:

• The Flying Autobiography; Less than an Enemy: More than a Friend, 2006
• The Defeat of the Victors: The Cinema between Creativity and Market Demand, 2000
• Portraits of Being: Cinematic Reflections, 2010
• The Book of Writing: That is Life…That is Color (Testimonies about Writing), 2018
• The Night of Erasure, The Daylight of Remembering, 2021

Conferences, Symposiums, and other works:

Nasrallah is also a painter and photographer; he has had four of his own photography shows:

• Autobiography of an Eye, Amman-Jordan, 1996
• Under Two Suns-1: Images and Words, Amman-Jordan, 2004
• The Life of the Dead Sea, a sols participation at the fifth Gwangju Biennale at South Korea, 2004
• Under Two Suns-2, Amman-Jordan, 2011

Hundreds of articles in literary and cultural criticism published in various journals and books, both in the Arab world and outside, and more than 14 literary critic books and 60 PhD and Maters thesis studying his work.

http://www.warscapes.com/reviews/palestinian-odyssey

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2018/march/gaza-weddings-ibrahim-nasrallah

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2021/summer/late-olives-ibrahim-nasrallah

https://www.poemhunter.com/ibrahim-nasrallah/

https://publishingperspectives.com/2019/10/arab-authors-viewpoint-arabic-fiction-laureate-ibrahim-nasrallah/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/25/ibrahim-nasrallah-wins-arabic-fiction-prize-novel-dystopian-extremists-second-war-of-the-dog

https://www.banipal.co.uk/book_reviews/44/inside-the-night-by-ibrahim-nasrallah/

https://cdn.istanbul.edu.tr/file/JTA6CLJ8T5/31AF058702C345E690004901E9D77549

• The Katara Prize for Arabic Novels for his novel A Tank Under the Christmas Tree, 2020
• The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Booker Prize) for his novel The Second Dog War, 2018
• The KATARA Prize for Arabic Fiction for his work Spirits of Kilimanjaro, 2016
• The Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work, 2012
• The Sultan-Uwais Literary Award for Arab poetry, United Arab Emirates, 1997
• The Arar literary Award for Jordanian and Arab poets, Jordan, 1991
• Three awards from the Jordanian Writers Association for the best volume of poetry in 1980, 1982, and 1984
• The Tayseer Sbool prize for Novels, Jordan, 1994

“With our literature and art, we Palestinians keep reminding ourselves that we are still beautiful people despite the brutal occupation and despite decades of anguish and death, because our beauty is above the occupation and not under it!”

“At young age, the tales and stories of our mothers and grandmothers were told to help us sleep, but today we recall them, in our writings, to awaken the world.”