Jordanian Wins International Arabic Fiction Prize

Jordanian poet and novelist Jalal Barjas won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel Notebooks of the Bookseller, published by the Arabic Institute for Research and Publishing. The prize comes with a $50,000 cash award as well as guaranteed translation into English. 

Set in Jordan and Moscow between 1947 and 2019, Notebooks of the Bookseller tells the story of Ibrahim, a bookseller and voracious reader, who loses his shop and finds himself on the street. Experiencing schizophrenia, he assumes the identities of the protagonists of the novels he loved, to commit a series of crimes of burglary, theft and murder. It is told in a fragmentary style using a variety of literary forms.

“Evoking times of unprecedented change, incipient corruption and simmering turmoil hissing away in the background, Notebooks of the Bookseller reflects on the lives of those who have been left behind in an alienating and expanding city landscape, mercilessly displacing the intimacy of olden times and the obligations of time-honoured norms," Professor Yasir Suleiman CBE, chair of the IPAF Board of Trustees, said of the novel. "The crisscrossing tales in the novel mark multiple descents into unforgiving despair. Sometimes pacy, but often slow and rich in detail, the novel paints a gripping picture of social and psychological fracture writ large.”