Haji Jabir

Haji Jaber is an Eritrean novelist, born in the coastal city of Massawa in 1976. He has published five novels: Samrawit (2012), winner of the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in 2012; Fatma's Harbour (2013); The Game of the Spindle (2015), which was longlisted for the 2016 Sheikh Zayed Book Award; Black Foam (2018), IPAF-longlisted in 2019; and The Ethiopian Rimbaud (2021). His books have been translated into English, French, Italian, Hebrew, Kurdish and Farsi. Haji Jaber’s writing forms part of a fictional project concerned with highlighting the past and present of Eritrea. Along with other Eritrean writers, he aims to draw the country out of its intellectual and cultural isolation and give it new value in its Arab and African context.