Basim Khandaqji

Basim Khandaqji is a Palestinian novelist born in 1983 in Nablus. He is currently serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison, where he has been held since 2004. He writes his fiction in prison. He is regarded as one of the most significant Palestinian writers of his generation. Khandaqji is the author of several novels written in prison, including Thawb al-Aswad (The Black Dress). A Mask, the Color of the Sky (Qina' bialwan al-sama'), his IPAF-winning novel of 2024, follows a young Palestinian man who, through an existential crisis, attempts to live as an Israeli. The novel is a profound exploration of identity, occupation, and the psychological effects of Palestinian dispossession. The novel won the IPAF while Khandaqji was incarcerated, and the prize and the extraordinary circumstances of its authorship attracted enormous international attention. The novel was praised for its psychological depth, its formal sophistication, and its unflinching engagement with the reality of Palestinian life under occupation. Khandaqji is a figure of enormous moral significance in contemporary Palestinian and Arab literature: a writer who continues to create work of the highest literary quality while experiencing the most extreme constraints imaginable.