“I could not believe that human beings could forget so easily...” Love and life, sex and death, childhood and oppression are Inside the Night. Vivid moments of remembrance, disparate yet interconnected, come together to form the body― torn but not broken―of this novel. Beginning with a scene of departure, the two nameless narrators roam back and forth in time, veering from childhood mischief to a Palestinian refugee camp massacre; from ardent first love to necessary migration to an Arab oil country for employment; from spirited adolescent fantasies to the grim reality of life in an Arab country whose claims to progress are mounted on the bent backs of its people. A forest of interwoven tales and strange destinies, Ibrahim Nasrallah’s novel carves the history of a people over half a century into fragments that are poetic, multi-sensory, and richly evocative. Inside the Night’s self-contained freedom is a refreshing development in the corpus of Palestinian, and human, literature.
Author
Ibrahim Nasrallah is a Palestinian poet, novelist, professor, painter and photographer. He was born in the Wihdat Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. He studied in UNRWA schools in the camp and got his teaching degree from a training college in the camp. He taught in Saudi Arabia for 2 years and worked as a journalist between 1978 and 1996. Nasrallah then returned to Jordan and worked at Dostur, Afaq and Hasad newspapers. He is in charge of cultural activities at Darat-al-Funun in Amman. He has published 14 books of poetry, 13 novels and two children's books. . In 2009 his novel "The Time of White Horses" was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize for Arabic Fiction. Nasrallah is a member of the Sakakini General Assembly. In 2006, Ibrahim Nasrallah decided to dedicate himself fully to his writing profession.
