LIVING THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Jalal Barjas wins the 2021 International Prize for Arabic Fiction with his clarion call for the marginalised, “Notebooks of the Bookseller”. He talks to Ben East.
Jordanian novelist Jalal Barjas considers the powerful alchemy that occurs when fictional characters seem to take on a life of their own. It doesn’t happen often, and when the voices in his latest novel, Notebooks of the Bookseller—which won the 14th International Prize for Arabic Fiction on May 25th—started to “create their destinies in a free manner that astonished me,” he knew he was on to something.
It triggered for Barjas powerful memories of fictional characters he has loved, leading him to a story in which his narrator, Ibrahim, begins to live his life like the people in the novels he’s read. “Writing is the product of our life experience, the product of all that deep contemplation of what is around us, and the product of a mysterious area inside us,” he says.
Set in Jordan and Moscow and tracking Ibrahim over 70 years as he finds himself a victim of corruption, out of work and homeless, Notebooks of the Bookseller was praised by Chawki Bazih, chairman of the 2021 IPAF judging panel, for its “rich, refined language and tight, thrilling plot.” It’s also a painful study of schizophrenia and mental health—Ibrahim commits crimes “in character” to right perceived wrongs, robbing banks and the wealthy to help the poverty-stricken, imposing his own form of justice. He meets a woman who changes the course of his life, like “lightning striking the landscape of my soul.” The novel becomes a clarion call for the marginalised and ignored.
“In many Arab countries we can see homeless people sleeping on the streets under the blazing sun and the bitter cold in winter,” Barjas says. “They are the poor who are no longer able to live with the new demanding requirements of life.”
Barjas also wanted to highlight the plight of other rejected people, such as children brought up in shelters as orphans. “Within the context of a culture that still depends in its thinking on tribalism and social norms, society considers them unacceptable,” he explains. “When you look at their identity cards, you will find that their national numbers are distinguished by a bunch of zeros. This is cruel and terrible. I’ve always had a strong concern for our humanity in different parts of the world, and in Notebooks of the Bookseller I feel I have spoken my ultimate word—or let me say that it is the loudest of all my cries.”
A socially conscious thread runs through Barjas’s work, whether his writing—not just novels but also poetry, travel writing and short stories—or his work with cultural institutions such as the Jordanian Narrative Laboratory and his radio programme, House of the Novel. His work has given his country’s literary scene a much-needed boost—Barjas describes problems with book piracy in Jordan—but also brought the issues of homelessness and mental health reflected in Notebooks of the Bookseller into the public discourse.
“I believe that educated human beings should take a pioneering role in expanding global awareness,” he says. “Holding this belief, I have made great efforts at the expense of my own time, that of my family and time for writing, but I am satisfied that I have said what I can say—and one of the positives of Jordan is that there is no control over what we publish. There is a wonderful level of freedom of speech.”
It is remarkable that Barjas has time to write award-winning novels at all. He’s also an aeronautical engineer. Yet he writes for three hours a day, and he reads other novels during his commute—he admires Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ability to deliver “extraordinary, breathtaking moments.”
“How did I accomplish all of this during such a short time?” he asks. “Well, if you dream of something and decide to achieve it, your inner strength will snowball and keep you motivated.”
One of those dreams is to be read by as wide an audience as possible. The IPAF win includes translating the novel into English. “Translation is the word’s way to the mind and heart of foreign readers,” he says. “I want my international readers to read my thoughts and picture my dreams so that our dreams unite…and mankind wins.”
