Novelist Elias Khoury, one in all Lebanon’s most famed writers and a fervent advocate of the Palestinian trigger, died on Sunday from sickness aged 76, sources near his household advised AFP.
Khoury, who was born in 1948 to a Christian household in Beirut, died within the Lebanese capital the place he had been hospitalised for months, the sources stated.
Over a number of a long time Khoury produced a big physique of labor in Arabic that touched on the themes of collective reminiscence, warfare and exile, alongside writing for newspapers, instructing literature and enhancing a publication linked to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Lots of his books had been translated into overseas languages together with French, English, German, Hebrew and Spanish.
One in every of his best-known novels, “Gate of the Solar”, tells the story of Palestinian refugees expelled from their houses in 1948 in the course of the warfare that coincided with Israel’s basis.
A whole lot of hundreds of Palestinians had been pushed out or expelled from their houses throughout that warfare, in what Palestinians name the Nakba, or disaster in Arabic.
The novel was made into a movie by Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah.
Khoury additionally wrote about Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil warfare in novels like “Little Mountain” and “Yalo”.
A champion of the Palestinian trigger since his youth, Khoury was co-managing editor of the PLO-linked Palestinian Affairs journal from 1975 to 1979, along with poet Mahmoud Darwish.
Khoury additionally headed the cultural part of the now-defunct Lebanese newspaper As-Safir and the cultural complement of the every day Annahar.
He taught literature at a number of US establishments together with New York’s prestigious Columbia College.
Khoury’s ailing well being lately didn’t cease him from writing, publishing articles reposted on his Fb web page from his hospital mattress.
On July 16, he revealed an article titled “A 12 months of Ache”, recounting his time bedridden in hospital and enduring “a life crammed with ache, which stops solely to herald in additional ache”.
He ended his piece by alluding to the Israel-Hamas warfare within the besieged Gaza Strip, which by then had raged on for greater than 9 months, triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7 assault.
“Gaza and Palestine have been brutally bombarded for nearly a yr now, however they stand steadfast and unshakable. A mannequin from which I’ve learnt to like life every single day,” Khoury wrote.
