Elias Khoury is one of the most distinguished writers and intellectuals in the contemporary Arab world. His contributions to Arab culture are substantial and enormously diverse, including novels, literary criticism, and cultural critique. His distinction as a writer and critic in the Arab world, already recognized in France where many of his works have been published in French translation, is currently finding recognition in the United States as well. "Gates of the city", Khoury's first novel, mixes the genres of the epic and the lyric to mediate on the pains and ravages of civil war. Khoury also provocatively draws on the traditions and themes of Arabic storytelling as articulated in "The thousand and one nights". A man wanders the labyrinths of the city of Beirut (unidentified in the novel) out of the past and through the present into an uncertain future, a trajectory much like the city itself, the space of contested cultural claims as yet unresolved. The man must find his way through the city's passages, out of his own past, through the present, and into a still anticipated future.
Khoury weaves this narrative around the problems of memory and forgetting, beautifully articulating the linguistic and cultural struggles that have exploded the city for the past fifteen years. In his fluid and lyrical style, meticulously captured by translator Paula Haydar, Khoury reveals his literary genius one that will play a pivotal role in bridging the distances between Arab and western writers and critics. Elias Khoury is a lecturer at the American University at Beirut and the cultural editor of al-Safir . He has also taught at Columbia University. Khoury has published book-length works in various genres, including novels, critical essays, and short stories. He is the author of, among other titles, Little mountain (English translation, Minnesota, 1989), and The travels of little Gandhi (English translation forthcoming from Minnesota). This book is intended for comparative literature.
- ISBN10 0816622248
- ISBN13 9780816622245
- Publish Date 1 July 1993
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 13 February 2003
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Minnesota Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 112
- Language English