Jordanian-Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah’s “The Second War of the Dog” won on Tuesday the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), the most prestigious annual Arab award for novel-writing, currently in its 11th edition.
His dystopian novel, published by Arab Scientific Publishers, beat out five other shortlisted candidates from each of Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Palestine.
Each of the shortlisted entries were awarded $10,000, while the winner was presented with an additional $50,000 during a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. The novel will also be translated into English.
Before the winner was announced, head of the jury Jordanian theater critic Ibrahim al-Saafin was quoted by Reuters as saying: “These novels tackle social, political, humanitarian and existential issues.”
The nominated novels “strongly address current problems and crises facing Arabs,” he added.
They tackle the major challenges hindering man’s progress and liberation from fear, elimination and oppression, expressing a yearning for freedom, justice and equality, he continued.
Nasrallah's book was chosen from among 124 entries from 14 countries for the award, which is affiliated with Britain's prestigious Man Booker Prize.
He told the IPAF after his shortlising: “The novel was written to provoke the reader, to worry the reader, to even, sometimes, make them breathless. ‘The Second War of the Dog’ is, in my opinion, a warning of what we could become in the future.”
“The novel starts off at the moment of a loss of certainty, that loss of trust in those whom you interact closely with – that neighbor, brother, father, or whoever it may be. The novel suggests that if we continue on our current path, we will reach a future where we would become mostly annihilistic,” he told IPAF according to its official website.
IPAF was launched in Abu Dhabi in 2007. It handed out its first prize to Egyptian novelist Bahaa Dhaher in 2008. Successive winners have come from Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.
