Writer Bassem Khandakji, imprisoned in Israel, won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction-2024, a prestigious award for fiction in the Arab world. His total number of works including poems and novels is 6. But he won this award for his novel ‘A Mask, The Color of the Sky’.
Qatar-based media Al Jazeera reported that Bassem Khandaqji has been imprisoned in an Israeli prison since 2004. Khandaqji was nominated for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. However, Rana Idris accepted the award on his behalf as he was incarcerated.
Rana Idris is the publisher of Bassem Khandakji’s books. He is the publisher of Dar al-Adab publishing house in Lebanon. Rana accepted the award on behalf of Bassem at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The novel ‘A Mask, The Color of the Sky’ was published in 2023.
In the novel A Mask, Bassem Khandakji tells the story of Noor, an archaeologist living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah, West Bank. The hero of this story, Noor, one day found a blue identity card in the pocket of an old coat and assumed another identity behind his identity. original
He wears a ‘mukhosh’ in his second role.
Khandakji was born in 1983 in Nablus, West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territory. He was imprisoned in Israel in 2004 at the age of 21. But he did not sit idly in prison. He holds an advanced degree in Political Science from Al-Quds University and also did a thesis on ‘Israel Studies’. Apart from this, he has published several poetry collections and novels.
Khandakji started writing this book in 2021 and finished it the same year. In an interview in January this year, Khandakji’s brother said that his family had not been able to speak to Khandakji for four months. Many Palestinians held in Israeli prisons since October 2023 have faced this problem.
Khandakji’s brother also said that after he started writing the novel, he used to write about two pages every day between 5 am and 7 am. But the guards often took his writing papers from him and destroyed them.