Gate of the Sun - Hardcover

I didn't fight, my dear man, for land or for history. I fought for the woman I loved. In a makeshift hospital in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, Yunis, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. His spiritual son Dr Khaleel - who has no real medical qualifications - nurses the older man, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. In an attempt to revive his patient, Khaleel, like a modern-day Sheherazade, begins telling Yunis the stories of their people's exile in Lebanon: their flight from Galilee in 1948; the violence of the 1950s; the massacre at the Shatila camp in 1982. He evokes deserted peasant villages, the suffering caused by the Lebanese civil war and the refugees' hopes to return home with a subtle mixture of anger and compassion. Khaleel also narrates Yunis' own extraordinary life: his childhood in Palestine and his commitment as a member of the fedayeen; perpetually on the run, fighting and hiding in caves. Interweaving many true-life tales collected throughout Lebanon and its refugee camps over the course of seven years, Elias Khoury has created a monumental and spellbinding saga, putting human faces to a political tragedy, which remains at the forefront of the news even today.

ELIAS KHOURY was born in Lebanon in 1948. Editor in Chief of the cultural pages of the daily newspaper Al-Nahar and professor of Arabic literature at New York University, he is the author of eleven novels. In 2000 he was awarded the Prize of Palestine for Gate of the Sun. Elias Khoury is regarded as one of the best Arabic writers of his generation.