Nasrallah — born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan — is no stranger to the IPAF, having been on four of the prize’s 11 longlists. His Ottoman-era historical novel Time of White Horses made the 2009 shortlist, and has since been translated by Nancy Roberts. Nasrallah’s longlisted The Lanterns of the King of Galilee was also translated by Roberts.
This was the first time for Nasrallah to win the prize.
Nasrallah is perhaps best-known for his “Palestinian Comedy” project, a wide-ranging series of novels in the spirit of Balzac’s “La Comédie Humaine.” Nasrallah is also a poet, artist, photographer, and social activist.
Each year, film interviews are made with each of the IPAF-shortlisted writers. In his interview, available online, Nasrallah said that he’d written the winning novel to “provoke” and “worry” the reader. He added, in a subtitled translation provided by IPAF organizers, that “The Second War of the Dog is, in my opinion, a warning of what we could become in the future.” And: “The novel suggests that if we continue on our current path, we will reach a future where we would become mostly annihilistic.”
