Jalal Barjas (aka) Jalal Barjes. Author. Writer. Poet. Novelist
Jordanian writer Jalal Barjas has won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his work Notebooks of the Bookseller.
The novel, published by The Arabic Institute for Research and Publishing, was named this year’s winner of the prize during an online ceremony.
Besides receiving a monetary prize of $50,000, Barjas will also be given funding towards securing an English translation of his novel.
Notebooks of the Bookseller is set in Jordan and Moscow between 1947 and 2019. It tells the story of Ibrahim, a bookseller and voracious reader, who loses his shop and finds himself homeless and diagnosed with schizophrenia. He begins to assume the identity of the protagonists of the novels he loved and commits a series of crimes, including burglary, theft and murder. He then attempts suicide before meeting a woman who changes his perspective on life.
Born in 1970, Barjas is a Jordanian poet and novelist who worked in the field of aeronautical engineering for several years. He is currently head of the Jordanian Narrative Laboratory and presents a radio programme called House of the Novel. He has also written articles for Jordanian newspapers and headed several other cultural organisations.
Barjas’s published work includes two poetry collections and four novels. His 2012 short story The Earthquakes won the Jordanian Rukus ibn Za’id ʻUzayzi Prize.
His 2013 novel Guillotine of the Dreamer won the Jordanian Rifqa Doudin Prize for Narrative Creativity in 2014. His Snakes of Hell won the 2015 Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel in the unpublished novel category, and was published by Katara in 2016. His third novel, Women of the Five Senses, was longlisted for the Ipaf in 2019.
Notebooks of the Bookseller was chosen by the Ipaf judges from a shortlist of six novels by authors from Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia.
The shortlisted works were all published between July 2019 and August 2020 and included The Eye of Hammurabi by Abdulatif Ould Abdullah, The Calamity of the Nobility by Amira Ghneim, The Bird Tattoo by Dunya Mikhail, File 42 by Abdelmajid Sabbath and Longing for the Woman Next Door by Habib Selmi.
The shortlisted authors will receive $10,000 each.
source/content: thenationalnews.com
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JORDAN