The International Prize for Arabic Fiction’s (IPAF) 2020 longlist was announced last month, and Said Khatibi’s third novel Firewood of Sarajevo, was among the 16 titles selected:

Khatibi’s first novel, The Book of Faults (kitab al-khataya), was published in 2013. After that, he brought out a travel journal, The Gardens of the East Afflamed (jana’in al-sharq al-multahiba) in 2015. Khatibi has also translated, to Arabic, a collection of poetry by Kateb Yacine titled Far from Nedjma (Ba’idan ‘an Nedjma). Khatibi can be read in Spanish, as his second novel Forty Years Waiting for Isabel, was translated by Noemi Fierro Bandera (Baile del Sol editions, 2018). His work is also available in French; a short story appears in the volume Miniscule Histories of the Arab Revolutions (Histoires minuscules des révolutions arabes, 2012) edited by Wassyla Tamzali.

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