Ibrahim Nasrallah

Ibrahim Nasrallah (; 2 December 1954), the winner of the Arabic Booker Prize (2018), was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were evicted from their land in Al-Burayj, Palestine in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in a refugee camp in Jordan, and began his career as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked in the media and cultural sectors till 2006 when he dedicated his life to writing. To date, he has published 15 poetry collections, 22 novels, and several other books. In 1985, he started writing the Palestinian Comedy covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history in a series of novels in which each novel is an independent one; to date 13 novels have been published in the framework of this project. Five of his novels and a volume of poetry have been published in English, nine in Persian, four works in Italian, two in Spanish, and one novel in Danish and Turkish.

Nasrallah is also an artist and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He won nine prizes, and his novel ''Prairies of Fever'' was chosen by ''the Guardian'' newspaper as one of the most important ten novels written by Arabs or non-Arabs about the Arab world. Three of his novels were listed on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for the years 2009, 2013, and 2014. In 2012 he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work. His books are considered one of the most influential and best seller Arabic books, as new editions are released frequently and many young readers are attracted to his books.

In January 2014, he succeeded in summiting Mount Kilimanjaro in a venture that involved two Palestinian adolescents, a boy and a girl, who have lost their legs. The climb was in support to a nongovernmental organization dedicated to providing medical services to Palestinian and Arab children. Nasrallah wrote about this journey in a novel entitled ''The Spirits of Kilimanjaro'' (2015). In 2016, Nasrallah was awarded the Katara Prize for Arabic Novels for this work.

His novel ''The Second Dog War'' was awarded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arabic Booker) for 2018. In 2020 he became the first Arabic writer to be awarded the "Katara Prize" for Arabic Novels for the second time for his novel "A Tank Under the Christmas Tree". Provided by Wikipedia