Jalal Barjas, the Jordanian author who has recently awarded the 14th edition of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), was honored Tuesday by Minister of Culture Ali al-Ayed.
Barjas, a trained aeronautical engineer, journalist and author, won the prestigious award for his “Dafater al-Warraq” (Notebooks of the Bookseller) which received wide Arab acclaim for its depth and intense poetic language.
Chosen from a shortlist of six novels, the book, in around 370 pages, tells the story of Ibrahim, a bookseller and voracious reader, who loses his stall and finds himself captive to a life of homelessness, after suffering from schizophrenia.
Assuming the protagonists of the novels he has read, Ibrahim carries out a series of robberies, thefts and murders, and tries to commit suicide before meeting the woman who changes the course of his life.
During the honoring ceremony, the Minister of Culture commended Barjas for “presenting Jordanian literature to the world, enriching the local cultural product, and making it more widely visible”.
For his part, the novelist said he was happy for winning the prestigious award, “especially as it coincided with nation’s celebrations of its independence anniversary and the centenary of the Jordanian state”.
Secretary-General of the Ministry of Culture Hazza Barari said that Barjas, through his novel, “presented the crisis of the Arab intellectual, with an accurate description of the Jordanian place and Jordanian personality”.
In addition to receiving $50,000, the prize value, the Madaba-born novelist will see his book, published by The Arabic Institute for Research and Publishing, translated into English.
Source: Jordan News Agency
