Internationally renowned Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury passed away on Sunday, September 15, 2024, at the age of 76, following a long illness. He died in Beirut, where he had been hospitalized for months. His work has been translated into many languages, and one of his books was made into a film.
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With our correspondent in Beirut, Paul Khalifeh
A major figure in committed literature, Elias Khoury has devoted most of his work to denouncing injustice and intolerance in all its forms. His first novel, The links of the circlewritten at the age of 27, was a great success, followed in 1977 by The little mountainwhich tells the story of the Lebanese civil war, which had broken out two years earlier.
A fervent defender of the Palestinian causehe will address this theme in many novels, including the trilogy Children of the Ghettocompleted in 2016. One of his best-known books, The Sun Gateis an epic that relates the Nakbathe forced departure of Palestinians from their lands in 1948. This work was adapted for the cinema by the Egyptian director Yousri Nasrallah.
Palestine haunted Elias Khoury until his last days. He dedicated his last article to it, written from his hospital bed in July, entitled A year of painA free spirit and a man of conviction, Elias Khoury was a firm critic of the atrocities committed by the militias during the civil war and of the actions of the Syria At Lebanon during the period of Syrian tutelage. His abundant work has been translated into some fifteen languages, including French, English, German and Spanish.
Also listen toLebanese writer Elias Khoury looks back on the Palestinian Nakba