Dublin literary prize awarded

Moroccan-born novelist and poet Tahar Ben Jelloun won the world’s most lucrative literary prize Thursday after international judges picked his novel about the horrors of desert prison camps as 2004’s best work of English fiction.

Ben Jelloun, 59, will receive the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award along with a crystal trophy at a dinner later this month in Dublin City Hall. He will get three-fourths of the $120,000 prize; the rest will go to Linda Coverdale, who translated the book into English.

Five international judges selected “This Blinding Absence of Light,” a scathing portrait of political dissidents imprisoned in a Moroccan camp, from more than 300 novels nominated by libraries from 43 countries.