Elias Khoury (writer) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Elias Khoury (born 12 July 1948, Beirut

Beirut

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...

) is a Lebanese

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

novelist, playwright, critic and a prominent public intellectual. He has published ten novels, which have been translated into several foreign languages, as well as several works of literary criticism. He has also written three plays. Between 1993 and 2009 he served as editor of Al-Mulhaq, the weekly cultural supplement of the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Nahar.

Life and career as academic, critic and editor

Elias Khoury was born into a middle-class family in the predominantly Christian Ashrafiyye district of Beirut. In 1967, as Lebanese intellectual life was increasingly becoming polarised, with the opposition taking on a radical Arab nationalist and pro-Palestinian hue, Khoury travelled to Jordan where he visited a Palestinian refugee camp and then enlisted in Fatah

Fatah

Fataḥ is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization , a multi-party confederation. In Palestinian politics it is on the left-wing of the spectrum; it is mainly nationalist, although not predominantly socialist. Its official goals are found...

, the largest resistance organisation in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. He left Jordan in 1970 after the Palestinian guerrilla forces in the kingdom were crushed in Black September

Black September in Jordan

September 1970 is known as the Black September in Arab history and sometimes is referred to as the "era of regrettable events." It was a month when Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan moved to quash the militancy of Palestinian organizations and restore his monarchy's rule over the country. The...

and travelled to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

to continue his studies. There he wrote a dissertation on the 1860 Lebanon conflict

1860 Lebanon conflict

The 1860 Lebanon conflict was the culmination of a peasant uprising which began in the north of Lebanon as a rebellion of Maronite peasants against their Druze overlords. It soon spread to the south of the country where the rebellion changed its character, with Druze turning against the Maronite...

. After returning to Lebanon, he became a researcher with the Palestine Liberation Organization

Palestine Liberation Organization

The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...

's research centre in Beirut. He took part in the Lebanese civil war

Lebanese Civil War

The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon. The war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in an estimated 150,000 to 230,000 civilian fatalities. Another one million people were wounded, and today approximately 350,000 people remain displaced. There was also a mass exodus of...

that broke out in 1975, and was seriously injured, temporarily losing his eyesight.

Khoury's first major involvement on the Arab literary scene was as a member of the editorial board of the journal Mawaqif, which he joined in 1972. Other members included Adonis

Ali Ahmad Said

Ali Ahmad Said Asbar born 1 January 1930, also known by the pseudonym Adonis or Adunis , is a Syrian poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France...

, Hisham Sharabi

Hisham Sharabi

Hisham Sharabi was Professor Emeritus of History and Umar al-Mukhtar Chair of Arab Culture at Georgetown University, where he was a specialist in European intellectual history and social thought...

and, somewhat later, Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet...

. Of this group, Khoury later remarked that it was important, but marginal: "We were neither on the liberal right nor on the classical left. Intellectually speaking, we were very much linked to the Palestinian experience."

From 1975 to 1979 he was editor of Shu'un Filastin (Palestinian affairs), collaborating with Mahmoud Darwish, and from 1981 to 1982 editorial director of Al-Karmel. From 1983 to 1990 he was editorial director of the cultural section of Al-Safir. He has been editor of Al-Mulhaq, the cultural supplement of Al-Nahar, since its reappearance after the end of the civil war.

He has taught in Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, in the American University of Beirut

American University of Beirut

The American University of Beirut is a private, independent university in Beirut, Lebanon. It was founded as the Syrian Protestant College by American missionaries in 1866...

, the Lebanese University

Lebanese University

The Lebanese University is the only public institution for higher learning in Lebanon. Founded in 1951, it has 17 faculties as of 2006 and serves various cultural, religious, and social groups of students and teachers....

, the Lebanese American University

Lebanese American University

The Lebanese American University is a secular, private and independent American university located in Lebanon...

and New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

Literary works

Elias Khoury's first novel was An 'ilaqat al-da'ira, 1975. It was followed in 1977 by the highly successful The Little Mountain, set during the Lebanese civil war, which Khoury initially saw as a catalyst for progressive change. Other well-known works include The Journey of Little Gandhi, about a rural immigrant to Beirut who lives through the events of the civil war, and Gate of the Sun, 2000. An epic re-telling of the life of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

Lebanon

since the Nakba of 1948, Gate of the Sun also subtly addresses the ideas of memory, truth and story-telling. It has been made into a film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

by Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

Yousry Nasrallah

Yousry Nasrallah is an Egyptian film director.Nasrallah was born to a Coptic Christian family in Cairo. He graduated in economics and political science at Cairo University. Following, he worked as a film critic and directing assistant in Beirut from 1978 to 1982...

.

Interviewed for the Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i newspaper Yediot Aharonot after the appearance of the Hebrew translation of the novel, Khouri remarked:

...when I was working on this book, I discovered that the “other” is the mirror of the "I." And given that I am writing about half a century of Palestinian experience, it is impossible to read this experience otherwise than in the mirror of the Israeli “other.” Therefore, when I was writing this novel, I have put a lot of effort into trying to take apart not only the Palestinian stereotype but also the Israeli stereotype as it appears in Arab literature and especially in the Palestinian literature of Ghassan Kanafani, for example, or even of Emil Habibi. The Israeli is not only the policeman or the occupier, he is the "other," who also has a human experience, and we need to read this experience. Our reading of their experience is a mirror to our reading of the Palestinian experience.

Khoury's most recent novel, Yalo, was controversial as it depicted a former militiaman accused of crimes during the civil war and portrayed the use of torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

in the Lebanese judicial system.

Khoury's novels are notable for their complex approach to both political themes and more fundamental questions of human behaviour. His narrative technique often involves an interior monologue, at times approaching a stream of consciousness. In recent works he has tended to use a considerable element of colloquial Arabic, although the language of his novels remains primarily Modern Standard Arabic, which is also called Fusha. This use of dialect forms adds to the credibility and immediacy of the narratorial voice. While use of dialect in dialogue is relatively common in modern Arabic literature (for example, in the work of Yusuf Idris

Yusuf Idris

Yusuf Idris, also Yusif Idris was an Egyptian writer of plays, short stories, and novels. Idris originally trained to be a doctor, studying at the University of Cairo...

), Khoury introduces it into the main narrative, an unusual step although one clearly associated with the narrative technique of his works.

Elias Khoury's works have been translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Catalan

Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

, Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, and Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

Recent political engagement

Al-Mulhaq, under Khoury's editorship, became the "tribune of opposition" to controversial aspects of the post-Civil War reconstruction of Beirut led by businessman and politician Rafiq al-Hariri. The destruction of surviving elements of the city's architectural heritage in the Burj area and the old Jewish quarter of Rue Ouadi Abou Jamil aroused particular opposition.

In March 2001 Khoury signed a statement along with 13 other Arab intellectuals (including Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet...

, Samir Kassir

Samir Kassir

Samir Kassir was a Lebanese professor of history at Saint-Joseph University and journalist. Born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, Kassir received his degree in philosophy and political philosophy in 1984, in 1990, Kassir earned his PhD in Modern History also from the University of...

and Adonis

Ali Ahmad Said

Ali Ahmad Said Asbar born 1 January 1930, also known by the pseudonym Adonis or Adunis , is a Syrian poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France...

), opposing the holding of a Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...

conference in Beirut, a statement which was praised in Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

by the Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i ambassador

Ambassador

An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....

to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Khoury responded angrily to the ambassador's remarks, pointing to the Israeli repression of the Palestinian intifada

Al-Aqsa Intifada

The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Oslo War, was the second Palestinian uprising, a period of intensified Palestinian-Israeli violence, which began in late September 2000...

.

Khoury, along with Samir Kassir

Samir Kassir

and other intellectuals and political activists, was involved in the establishment of the Democratic Left Movement

Democratic Left Movement (Lebanon)

The Democratic Left Movement is the first leftist political party in the Lebanese Parliament. It was founded in September 2004 by left-wing intellectuals and activists who previously split from the Lebanese Communist Party...

List of works

Titles are given in English where a translation has been published, and otherwise in Arabic. Dates are of the appearance of the original Arabic work.

'an 'ilaqat al-da'irah, 1975 (novel)
The Little Mountain, 1977 (novel)
Dirasat fi naqd al-shi'r, 1979 (criticism)
The Gates of the City, 1981 (novel)
White Masks' , 1981 (novel)
Al-dhakira al-mafquda, 1982 (criticism)
Al-mubtada' wa'l-khabar, 1984 (short stories)
Tajribat al-ba'th 'an ufq, 1984 (criticism)
Zaman al-ihtilal, 1985 (criticism)
The Journey of Little Gandhi, 1989 (novel)
The Kingdom of Strangers, 1993 (novel)
Majma' al-Asrar, 1994 (novel)
Gate of the Sun 1998 (novel)
Ra'ihat al-Sabun, 2000 (novel)
Yalo, 2002 (novel; Best Translated Book Award
Best Translated Book Award
Best Translated Book Award is an annual literature award given by Three Percent, the online literature magazine of Open Letter Books, which is the book translation press of the University of Rochester. It is awarded to the best original translation published that year. A long list and short list...

2009 short-list)
Ka'anaha Nae'ma, 2007 (novel)

Footnotes

http://www.archipelagobooks.org/catalog/gateofthesun/banipal.html
http://www.archipelagobooks.org/catalog/gateofthesun/shammas.html
Kassir, Samir, Histoire de Beyrouth, Paris, Fayard. ISBN 2-213-02980-

External links

at Levantine Cultural Center
Interview with Elias Khoury, from Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies website
Review of Gate of the Sun in the New York Times
Jeremy Harding goes to Beirut to meet the novelist Elias Khoury in London Review of Books
'A circle of madness': article by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian, 28 July 2007
Google Books Gate of the Sun: Bab al-Shams Translated by Humphrey Davies Published by Macmillan, (2007) ISBN 0312426704

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