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Featured Author
Ibrahim Nasrallah
Ibrahim Nasrallah
Featured Author
Ibrahim Nasrallah was born at a refugee camp in Jordan in 1954 to Palestinian parents. He remained living at the camp until adulthood, when he began working as a teacher and a journalist. In 1996 he became vice-president of Darat al-Funun, one of Jordan's main centres of art and culture. A literary critic, poet and writer (he has published fifteen collections of poetry, eleven novels and numerous works of criticism), he is also a painter and a photographer.
His work has been a subject of controversy in Jordan, where he has been faced with numerous charges including insulting the state, inciting dissension and blasphemy. The prosecution began in 1985 when the Jordanian authorities prevented Nasrallah from travelling abroad because of his writing, and has continued for the last two decades. Most recently, in June 2008, Nasrallah faced charges relating to national security, provoked by the publication of his latest collection of poetry Nu'man Yastariddu Lawnahu (Anemone Regains Its Colour), and possible imprisonment. He was 'confused, and angry and also afraid'. However, he continues to write, struggling against the restrictions of censorship and governmental control.
With Inside the Night, Nasrallah has covered new and contentious ground once again. As Dr. Faisal Darraj from al-Jadid fi-'alam al-kutub wa-l-maktabat magazine writes, 'Nasrallah has entered new territory, at its core the themes of exile and the Palestinian tragedy widened to a universal human predicament... [Inside the Night] is the most serious and skilful innovation to the Palestinian novel since Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun and Emile Habiby's acclaimed Secret Life of Saeed the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist.'