Jamal Naji (), (1 November 1954 – 6 May 2018) was a

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

ian author of

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

origins. He was born in 1954 in the

refugee camp A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for in ...

of Aqbat Jaber in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, annexed by Jordan. He moved to

in 1967, when he was in his early teens. Naji began writing in his early twenties, and published his first novel ''The Road to Balharith'' in 1981–82. Since then he had written more novels as well as short story collections and television scripts. His novel ''When the Wolves Grow Old'' was shortlisted for the

Arabic Booker Prize The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) (), also known as "the Arabic Booker", is regarded as the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world. Its aim is to reward excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing ...

in 2010. He was the president of the Jordanian Writers Association from 2001 to 2003. He lived and worked in

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

, Jordan.

References

1954 births 2018 deaths Writers from Amman Jordanian writers Palestinian novelists Palestinian emigrants to Jordan {{Jordan-bio-stub