Elias Khoury

In 2006, Elias Khoury was teaching as a visiting professor for Modern Arabic Literature and Comparative Literature at New York University.

Khoury's novel, Yalo (2002, and translated into English in 2008 for US publication by American Peter Theroux), depicted a former militiaman accused of crimes during Lebanon's civil war. He described the use of torture in the Lebanese judicial system. The title refers to the name of a Palestinian Arab village that was destroyed and in territory annexed by Israel during the 1967 war. All the inhabitants were expelled and most went to Jordan.

Khoury has been an editor of famous Lebanese newspapers. Between 1993 and 2009, he served as an editor of Al-Mulhaq, the weekly cultural supplement of the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Nahar. He also taught at universities in some Arab and European countries, and the United States.

Khoury published his first novel in 1975, An 'ilaqat al-da'ira. It was followed in 1977 by The Little Mountain, set during the Lebanese civil war, a conflict which Khoury initially thought would be a catalyst for progressive change. Other works include The Journey of Little Gandhi, about a rural immigrant to Beirut who lives through the events of the civil war, and Gate of the Sun (2000).

In 1972, Khoury joined and became a member of the editorial board of the journal Mawaqif. From 1975 to 1979, Khoury was editor of Shu'un Filastinia (Palestinian Affairs Magazine), collaborating with Mahmoud Darwish. Between 1980 and 1985, Khoury worked as an editor of the series Thakirat Al-Shu'ub published by the Arab Research Foundation in Beirut. From 1981 to 1982, he was editorial director of Al-Karmel Magazine. From 1983 to 1990, he was the editorial director of the cultural section of Al-Safir. Khoury also worked as the technical director of Beirut Theater from 1992 to 1998, and a co-director in September Festival for contemporary arts.

In 1967, as Lebanese intellectual life became increasingly polarised, with the opposition taking on a radical Arab nationalist and pro-Palestinian hue, 19-year-old Khoury traveled to Jordan, where he visited a Palestinian refugee camp and enlisted in Fatah, the largest resistance organization in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. He left Jordan after thousands of Palestinians were killed or expelled in the wake of an attempted coup against King Hussein, in Black September.

In 1966, he earned his high school diploma after attending al-Ra'i al-Saleh High School in Beirut. He studied History at the Lebanese University and graduated in 1971. In 1972, he received his PhD in Social History at the University of Paris.

Elias Khoury (Arabic: إلياس خوري; born 12 July 1948) is a Lebanese novelist, and prominent public intellectual. Accordingly, he has published myriad novels related to literary criticism, which have been translated into several foreign languages, including English. Khoury has also written three plays and two screenplays.

Elias Khoury was born in 1948 into a Greek Orthodox middle-class family in the predominantly Christian Ashrafiyye district of Beirut.

Gate of the Sun is an epic re-telling of the life of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since the 1948 Palestinian exodus, which also addresses the ideas of memory, truth, and storytelling. The book was adapted as a film of the same name by Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah (2002).