International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2020 Longlist.

Dheeb is taken prisoner by Ottoman soldiers at the start of the great Arab uprising of 1916 and deported to Damascus, like other citizens of Medina, western Arabia, who suffered the tyranny of its Ottoman ruler. Previously, Dheeb had been kidnapped from Mecca and sold as a slave. Now he finds himself in Damascus working in an inn owned by a woman, waiting for the Ottomans to leave the city. The novels depict an important period in the history of the Arabian Peninsula, known as “seferberlik”, or the mass deportation and forced conscription of Arabs into the Ottoman army during the First World War.

Magbool Al-Alawi is a Saudi writer born in 1968. He obtained a BA in Artistic Education from the University of Umm Al Qura, Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 1992 and works as a teacher. His first novel, Turmoil in Jeddah (2010), was IPAF longlisted in 2011. His second novel, Years of Love and Transgression (2011) was shortlisted for the Saudi Arabia Novel Award in 2012. He has published five further novels and two short story collections.