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Elias Khoury. We will deal with details of the life of Elias Khoury.
Some Arab writers were strongly committed to the causes of their nation.
Especially the Palestinian issues, which were something that could not be forgotten by a normal person
How can a reader forget it?
Among these great writers, the great Lebanese writer, Elias Khoury
This writer made the Palestinian cause his first, supreme, and sublime goal
Elias Khoury is a Lebanese writer, novelist, critic, and playwright, born in Beirut in 1948.
He is one of the editors of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Novelist, playwright, critic, and university professor.
He wrote twelve novels, including The Little Mountain, White Faces, and Gate of the Sun.
His books have been translated into more than ten languages, including Hebrew.
He held the position of editor-in-chief of the cultural attaché of “An-Nahar” newspaper from 1992 to 2009
Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the “Journal of Palestine Studies”.
In 2011, he was awarded the Spanish Legion of Honor, Commander
It is the highest honor bestowed by King Juan Carlos, in honor of his literary path
He won the 2011 UNESCO Prize for Arab Culture in recognition of his efforts to spread Arab culture and introduce the world to it.
the famous writer Elias Khoury
The beginnings of Elias Khoury
Elias Khoury was born on July 12, 1948
Amidst a middle-class family in the Ashrafieh district of Beirut.
He studied sociology and history at Beirut University
Then in 1970, he moved to Paris to continue his studies in the same field.
When he returned to Lebanon, the Palestinian cause had a profound impact on himself
He became a researcher at the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center in Beirut.
Here Khoury became a general thinker, playing a major role in the Arab cultural scene
In defense of freedom of expression and democracy,
And he became one of the pioneers of modern Arabic literature that seeks to create new dimensions in the modernity movement and convey suffering.
Achievements of Elias Khoury
In 1967 he went to Jordan
Where he visited the Palestinian refugee camp
He then joined the Fatah movement affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization at that time.
Also, He participated in the Lebanese Civil War that broke out in 1975
He was seriously injured.
In 1975 he published his first novel, “On Circle Relationships”.
From 1975 to 1979 he worked as Editor-in-Chief for the magazine “Palestinian Affairs”
He also participated in editing both “Mawaqif” and “The Road” magazine
In 1981 he was managing editor of “Al-Karmel” magazine,
And between 1983 to 1990
He was the editor-in-chief of the cultural section of the Lebanese newspaper, “As-Safir”.
Also, He worked as artistic director of the Beirut Theater between 1992 and 1998.
He has taught at the Lebanese University, the Lebanese American University, the American University of Beirut, and Columbia University in New York
He taught Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University.
In 1998, he released the novel “Gate of the Sun”, which was an uncharacterized success
As this novel won the State of Palestine Prize for the novel
In 2004 it was turned into a movie directed by Yusra Nasrallah.
He was the editor-in-chief of the weekly cultural supplement of the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar from 1993 until 2009.
Khoury has also held the position of editor-in-chief of the Journal of Palestinian Studies since 2011.
In 2011, he was awarded the Spanish Legion of Honor, Commander
It is the highest honor bestowed by King Juan Carlos, in honor of his literary path
He won the 2011 UNESCO Prize for Arab Culture
This was in appreciation of the efforts he made in spreading Arab culture and introducing the world to it.
In 2013, Bab al-Shams’ novel was ranked 68 on the list of the 100 best novels in history, according to the global “List Muse” site.
In 2016, he won the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction, the second session, in the category of published Arabic novels
This is because of the novel “Children of the veto – My name is Adam,” published in the same year.
Elias Khoury’s personal life
Elias Khoury does not share details of his personal life with the media
Therefore, we do not know anything about his personal life.
As for Elias Khoury’s religion, beliefs, and indigenous sect
He was born into a Roman Orthodox Christian family
Quick facts about Elias Khoury
- Khoury was brought up with a deep Christian education
He realized what injustice meant, so he linked the Palestinian people to Christ and his torments
But what influenced him the most – he thinks – was the climate of the left-wing revolutionary movement that swept the world in the 1960s.
- In Elias Khoury’s opinion, reading is a habit and a habit
And that people become familiar with the experience of each writer, and all he has to do is continue, to write his own experience from a new perspective
Not to mimic other experiences at all.
- Directed Beirut Theater and co-directed the Ayl Festival of Modern Arts in Beirut.
- Khoury believes that the events of recent years, including the Arab uprising and its bloody aftermath, resemble the Nakba
Khoury says
In the past ten years
We witnessed great hope, great disappointment, great ambition, and great disasters. “
The main problem facing Arab novelists today is:
How to give this pain a voice and how to listen to the silence of the victims.
- His novels were translated into many languages, including Hebrew, English, and French.
- In March 2001 Khoury signed with thirteen Arab thinkers, among them (Adonis, Samir Qusay, Mahmoud Darwish …)
A statement condemned the holding of a conference in Beirut to deny the Holocaust.
- on January 11, 2013
Three hundred Palestinian youths built a tent village on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
They called it “Bab the Sun” after Khoury’s story.
- Khoury, along with Samir Kassir, and other intellectuals and political activists, founded the Democratic Left Movement.
His great position with the Palestinian cause
It is not strange for the great Lebanese-born novelist and writer, of Palestinian affiliation, to be loyal to Palestine
The liberation and human struggle and struggle has something that cannot be discussed
Culture is for him
It is a moral commitment and love.
Through his recounting of his personal experience with the Research Center of the Palestine Liberation Organization
And from his current position on the Palestine issue and the Lebanon issue in particular and the Arab issues in general
It turns out that the cultural activities was and still is seen as an act of liberation, inseparable from the act of Venice
It is a humane liberation revolutionary project
The educated person must identify with the victims
And to act as a free and independent conscience that it expresses who can not express themselves
It is a tool and a voice for them.
From this standpoint, and with a conscious choice
Elias Khoury returned from Paris to join the Palestinian revolution
To live among his family, the Lebanese and the Palestinians
Let him devote himself to the cause of Palestine, the cause of freedom, justice, and humanity.
His position was reinforced by the rich experience at the Research Center.
He said about the research center
It was “a school where we learned to research.”
Culture is at the service of the people. “
The research center as a school, Khoury said
It came as an integral part of the function of the Palestinian revolution with its launch at the time
To restore identity, culture, and language
Where the national tide and the relics of Palestinian nationalism
And were Beirut, which was then the Arab Cultural Center
The center was treated as part of “making a revolution”,
At the time in Beirut, it was like a “university of Arab militants.”
That is why the center’s staff enjoyed a spirit of independence, a critical spirit, of self, revolution, and leadership.
Where great thinkers such as Sabri Jeries and Asaad Abdul Rahman worked in the Research Center
And where the rigor and accuracy enjoyed by the management of the center by its director at the time, Anis Sayegh
For Khoury and for others, it was natural for the center to be a school in which people learn to write and research
And that the cultural act constitutes for him a moral commitment and love for people.
Naturally, this was also strengthened by the presence of a creative writer at the time, such as Ghassan Kanafani
The spirit of independence and criticism that Khoury spoke of,
It came from Wayman’s conviction that the Palestinian resistance at the time was a revolutionary project that bore interpretation and diligence.
So, no one is deified in the revolution, no one can suppress
And where a clash may occur between culture and power
What protects culture is that the intellectuals remain resilient
Do not let go of the yard in the dark moments, the moments of retreat
Stressing that what protects the writer and the intellectual is moral commitment and love.
This moral commitment and love appeared in Elias Khoury throughout his cultural production.
Whether in his work at the Research Center, the Studies Center, the As-Safir newspaper, the Carmel magazine, or the An-Nahar newspaper
And other platforms.
This was evident in his critical works, stories, and theatrical and literary writings in general
And in his novels in particular.
Translated into many languages
Starting with the famous novel “On Circle Relationships” in 1975
Even the other famous novel “Children of the Ghetto – My Name is Adam” in 2016.
Through his famous novels “The Journey of Little Gandhi”, “Kingdom of Strangers” and “Gate of the Sun”.
As an expression of his love for people and their expression, his bias towards victims, and his moral and humanitarian commitment
The characters of the protagonists of his novels were real people, such as the martyr fighter Ali Abu Touq
He is one of the founders and leaders of the Yarmouk Brigade, who was martyred in 1987 in defense of the camps.
He emphasized that this moral commitment and love is not all preaching and missionary
But as basic reality and life instinct, it is a humanitarian concern.
Today we need it most
We need commitment in light of the difficult and deteriorating situation.
The bad situation experienced by the Arabs in general and the Arab East in particular
This is worse than the situation of the Arabs in the First World War, as he described it
With this moral commitment and love for people.
Which is expressed and expressed by Elias Khoury
It can be said that it truly embodies the “organic intellectual” model,
What was talked about by the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci
That intellectual critic of traditional culture
The presented is a vision of the world that corresponds to the function of the new forces seeking within the framework of the historical process
To face injustice, exploitation, and tyranny, victorious for human humanity.
Quotes by Elias Khoury
- Love, my son, has a thousand doors
But the one-sided love is not a door, it is an illusion.
- A man cannot die among men
A man needs a woman to die
- People speak in order to fill the gaps that separate them from others
And fill their souls with the sounds of words.
- People are nothing but the imaginations of their memories
- What we deserve to die for is what we want to live for
- I walk on tiptoe not to wake you up
Then I laugh at myself
I do not want this world but to wake you up.
- When your mother resembles women, you are no longer your mother
- Do whatever you want, whatever you want
Your truth became inside me
- A person does not reveal his name except at the moment of absence
- No, not love
When love passes, it does not return
- Knowledge is not produced outside of social needs.
Social needs need channels that they dig to express themselves.
Here, we arrive at the end of our article about Elias Khoury.
