Elias Khoury’s Prose for Palestine

• In 2013, Palestinians and foreign activists erected 25 tents on Palestinian land in the West Bank as a resistance against Israeli settlements.
• The tents were destroyed by the Israeli army, but the Palestinians persevered and rebuilt.
• The first encampment was named “Bab al-Shams,” or “gate of the sun,” and the second “the Grandchildren of Yunis.”
• The inspiration for these encampments was a novel by Lebanese writer, Elias Khoury, called Gate of the Sun.
• Khoury’s novels brought the Palestinian national cause to life in vivid prose.

‘Epic of the Palestinian people’
• The novel follows Palestinian exiles through village, camp, and battlefield, entwining individual stories of love, loss, betrayal, struggle, sorrow, and joy with the battles and massacres.
• Yunis’ life symbolizes the decades of loss and resistance that have characterised the Palestinian national movement.

Mirroring a Shattered World
• Other novels explore themes of the Lebanon Civil War, the need for mirrors, and the Palestinian struggle.
• Little Mountain paints a lurid portrait of the Lebanon Civil War, while The Broken Mirrors: Sinalcol tells the story of a doctor who flees Lebanon and returns to a changed Beirut.

My Name is Adam
• Set in one of the most horrifying events of the 1948 Nakba, My Name is Adam pierces a needle of beauty with his words to help readers learn how to read the silence of victims.
• Khoury’s passing comes amidst the ongoing genocide in Palestine, demonstrating that the language of art can speak when all other tongues have been torn out from their roots.