DUBLIN, Ireland — Moroccan-born novelist and poet Tahar Ben Jelloun won a $120,000 literary prize last week after international judges picked his novel about the horrors of desert camps as the best work of English fiction for 2002.

Ben Jelloun, 59, will receive the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award along with a Waterford crystal trophy at a dinner later this month at Dublin City Hall. He will get three-fourths of the money, while 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, as the best among more than 300 novels nominated by libraries in 43 countries.

Originally published in French under the title Cette Aveuglante Absence de Lumière, the novel was a best seller in France in 2001.

The novel, nominated by a library in Oslo, Norway, describes atrocities at desert camps run by Morocco's King Hassan II until their closure under international pressure in 1991. Ben Jelloun, a psychotherapist, based his story on extensive interviews with one survivor of the camps.

The prize, launched in 1996, is run by Dublin's public libraries and largely financed by a Connecticut-based management consultant firm, Improved Management Productivity and Control. IMPAC has its European headquarters in Dublin.

Ben Jelloun prevailed in a 10-book shortlist that included The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster, Any Human Heart by William Boyd, Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The White Family by Maggie Gee, Balthasar's Odyssey by Amin Maalouf, Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry, Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi and House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk.