I was delighted. Being nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and for the third time, is a great honour and a boost to my self-confidence. It spurs me on to continue to develop my work and look for new creative horizons.
After finishing my novel The Stone of Happiness and submitting it for publication, I started afresh completely and began to make notes about an idea which had been in my mind for a long time. It was an idea for a novel about an unlucky archivist who is fired from his job and becomes a funeral driver, carrying the bodies of foundlings tossed beside the road and left on rubbish dumps, to bury them in a secret cemetery that will later be called the ‘Valley of the Butterflies’.
The actual writing took about two and a half years. But the idea was an old one, and I had expended a lot of time and effort processing it in my mind. I began writing it in Baghdad and the last few chapters were also written there. Baghdad is where the hero is born and where the novel is set.
I don’t know if sitting in a café and listening to people talking, and drinking lots of cups of coffee, counts as a writing ritual or not, but when I don’t do that, I suffer from mental paralysis!
A new novel which I began at the end of last year, and I’m still working on the early chapters.
