Hachette India

A Mask the Colour of the Sky

Bassem Khandaqji

Addie Leak

Key Selling Points:

• Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

• Written from prison by a Palestinian political prisoner

• Explores themes of identity, disguise, conflict, and division

Target Readership:

• For readers of Minor Detail by Adania Shibli; Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa; You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat; Enter Ghost and Recognizing the Stranger by Isabella Hammad; The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah; and the oeuvre of Ghassan Kanafani.

• For readers of political fiction, fiction about war, genocide, contemporary accounts of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Bassem Khandaqji

Bassem Khandaqji, born in 1983 in Nablus, is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and journalist. Arrested in 2004 at the age of twenty-one for his political activities, he continued to write from prison, producing a body of work that has earned wide recognition across the Arab world. His novels are known for their lyrical prose, meticulous research, and deep engagement with Palestinian history and memory. Today, Khandaqji is regarded as one of the most distinctive literary voices of his generation. International human rights observers have long criticized his arrest, trial, and imprisonment. He was released from prison in 2025, one year after A Mask the Colour of the Sky won the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction.