A mask the color of the sky

A Mask the Color of the Sky

This novel is the first part of the "Mirrors" tetralogy by the Palestinian writer and prisoner Basem Khandaqji, and focuses on an attempt to correct the Western and Israeli narrative regarding the events in Palestine.

The novel revolves around Nour, an archaeology researcher living in a camp near Ramallah. By chance, he obtains a mask belonging to one of the occupiers, so he adopts an Israeli identity under the name "Or". Through this new identity, he joins an archaeological excavation mission in one of the settlements, to have Palestine revealed to him, buried under the layers of its deep history and hidden stories.

The head of the judging committee described the novel as a bold literary work that experiments with new narrative forms exploring a major trilogy: self-awareness, awareness of the other, and world awareness. Through literary imagination, the text deconstructs a complex and painful reality, in which familial fragmentation, displacement, racism, and genocide are manifested. The threads of history, myth, and the present also intertwine in the novel, highlighting a strong human pulse and a deep aspiration towards freedom and liberation from everything that distorts the human being and society.