Leading Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury dies at 76

BASSEM MROUE

Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury who dedicated much of his writings to the Palestinian cause and taught at universities around the world, making him one of Lebanon’s most prominent intellectuals, has died. He was 76.

Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death early Sunday, Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily that he worked for said. The Lebanese writer, born and raised in Beirut, was outspoken in defense of freedom of speech and harsh criticism of dictatorships in the Middle East.

In addition to his novels, Khoury wrote articles in different Arab media outlets over the past five decades making him well known throughout the Arab world. Two days after the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7, Khoury wrote an article in Al-Quds A-Arab daily titled “It’s Palestine.” Khoury wrote then that “the biggest open-air prison, the besieged Ghetto of Gaza, has launched a war against Israel, occupied settlements and forced settlers to flee.”

Born in Beirut on July 12, 1948, Khoury had been known for his political stances from his support of Palestinians to his harsh criticism of Israel and what he called its “brutal” settling policy in Palestinian territories. He studied at the Lebanese University and later at the University of Paris, where he received a PhD in social history.

“The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote referring to Israel’s settlement policies in occupied Palestinian territories. The “nakba,” or “catastrophe” is a term used by many Arabs to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948. Khoury was an outspoken supporter of Arab uprisings that broke out in the region starting in 2011 and toppled several governments.

“The question is not why the Arab revolts broke out,” Khoury wrote after uprisings that toppled long-serving leaders such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. “The question is not how people tore down the wall of fear but how fear built Arab kingdoms of silence for five decades.”

Khoury, who belonged to a Greek Orthodox Christian family, took part in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and was wounded in one of the battles. From 1992 until 2009, Khoury was the editor of the cultural section of Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar newspaper. Until his death, he was the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Studies magazine, a bulletin issued by the Beirut-based Institute for Palestine Studies.

His first novel was published in 1975, but his second, Little Mountain, which he released in 1977 and was about Lebanon’s devastating civil war was very successful.

Bab al-Shams, or Gate of the Sun, released in 2000, was about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since 1948. A movie about the novel was made in Egypt. His novels were translated to several languages including Hebrew. Khoury also taught at different universities including New York University, Columbia, Princeton and Houston, as well as the University of London.