Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Mahmoud Shuqair was born in the Jabal al-Mukabber neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1941. He studied primary and secondary education in Jerusalem schools, obtained his high school diploma from the Ibrahimiyya School, and received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and sociology from Damascus University in 1965.
He worked as a teacher at Kharbatha Bani Harith School in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate. He began writing in 1961, worked for Al-Jihad newspaper in 1965, and headed a number of newspapers and magazines, including Al-Tali’a Al-Maqdisiya newspaper, Dafatir Thaqafiya magazine, and Sawt Al-Watan magazine. He worked for Al-Ra’i newspaper in Jordan as a weekly columnist between (1991-1993), and worked on the Palestine Awards Committee (1996-2000), and on the Masarat Committee.
Shuqair became involved in national activism early in his life, participating in demonstrations against the Baghdad Pact in the 1950s. He joined the Communist Party in 1965, influenced by Muhammad Khalid al-Batrawi, and was active in politics within the occupied territories until 1975. He worked on editing several party publications, including his clandestine newspaper, "Al-Watan," between 1969 and 1974. He became a member of the party's Central Committee between 1976 and 1998, and was also involved in institutional union work. He served on the administrative board of the Jordanian Writers Association between 1977 and 1987, and as its vice president. He was also a member of the General Secretariat of the Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists between 1987 and 2004, a member of the Palestinian National Council between 1988 and 1996, and the People's Party's representative to the journal "Problems of Peace and Socialism" in Prague.
He published his first story in the Jerusalem-based magazine Al-Ufuq Al-Jadeed in 1962, began writing for children in 1975, and started writing flash fiction in 1985. He has published eighty works, including short stories, flash fiction, biographies, children's literature, travelogues, novels, plays, and screenplays. He has written four plays and six Arabic television series, and his stories have been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Czech. His work has been the subject of numerous university theses in Palestine, the Arab world, and Europe.
His short story collections include: *The Bread of Others* (1975), *The Palestinian Boy* (1977), *Shakira's Portrait* (2003), and *My Cousin Condoleezza* (2004). His very short story collections include: *Rituals for the Mischievous Woman* (1986), *The Barrier* (1986), *The Silence of Windows* (1991), *A Fleeting Passage* (2002), and *Jerusalem Alone There* (2010). His children's story collections include: *The Soldier and the Toy* (1986), *The Donkey's Song* (1988), *The Rooster's Profession* (1999), *The Boy Who Breaks Glass* (2001), and *A Harsh Experience* (2001). His novels for young adults include: *Mary Said... The Boy Said* (1996), *Me and Jumana* (2000), and *A Distant Cup for My Queen Sister* (2007). His novels include: *The Family's Mare* (2013), *In Praise of the Women of the Family* (2015), and *Family Shadows* (2018). He has also written autobiographical works. Diaries: In Praise of the Mirrors of the Country (2012), Me and Writing: From the ABCs of Language to the Sea of Words (2018), Those Places (2020), and Those Times (2022).
Shukair wrote several television series, including: Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1980), Hadath fi al-Ma'moura (1981), Al-Ziyara (1984), Ibrahim Touqan (1984), Durub La Taltaqi (1986), and Buyut fi al-Rih (1987). His plays include: Dimuqrati bil-Afya (1996), Kullu 'ala al-Reemut (1999), Tafasil Saghira (2000), and Jumana wal-Awlad (2008). He received numerous awards, including: the Jordanian Writers Association Award in 1991, the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Freedom and Creativity in 2011, the Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity in 2015, the State of Palestine Award for Literature in 2019, the Turkish Writers Union Award in 2023, and the Palestine International Award for Literature in 2023.
Shuqair suffered greatly, living as a refugee for three months during the Nakba. He was administratively detained by the Israeli occupation for ten months in Damon Prison in 1969, and again for ten months in Beit Lid Prison in 1974. In 1975, he was deported to Lebanon along with four comrades, including Suleiman al-Najab, Abdullah al-Syriani, and two others from the Gaza Strip. He stayed in Beirut for eight months, then lived in Amman for fourteen years, and in Prague for three years, before returning to Palestine in 1993.
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