Azher Jirjees Author

Azher Jirjees is an Iraqi writer and novelist, born in Baghdad in 1973. From 2003, he worked as a journalist in Iraq and published a number of articles and stories in local and Arab newspapers and periodicals. In 2005, he wrote a satirical book about terrorist militias entitled The Earthly Hell, which resulted in an assassination attempt against him and he was forced to flee the country. He fled to Syria, then Morocco and finally to Norway, where he now lives permanently. His other works include two short story collections, Fouq Bilad al-Sawad (Above the Country of Blackness, 2015) and Saani‘ al-Halwa (The Sweetmaker, 2017), and two novels. His first novel, At Rest in the Cherry Orchard (al-Nawm fī Haql al-Karaz, 2019), was longlisted for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His second novel Hajar al-Sa‘ada (The Stone of Happiness) was shortlisted for the same prize in 2023. He works as a freelance translator between Arabic and Norwegian.