Tel Aviv, Israel:
Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, imprisoned in Israel twenty years ago, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel 'A Mask, the Color of the Sky'.
The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The award was accepted on behalf of Khandaqji by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar al-Adab, the book's Lebanon-based publisher.
Khandaqji was born in 1983 in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and imprisoned on charges of a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from prison via the Internet.
The mask in the novel's title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an Israeli's old coat.
Khandaqji's book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, chairman of the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide and racism.”
Since his imprisonment, Khandaqji has written collections of poetry, including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem”.
He has also written three previous novels.
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