Gate of the Sun

Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury

translated from Arabic by Humphrey Davies

A mosaic of personal stories that combine to form the story of Palestine from 1936 to the present day. Dr Khaleel Ayoub spatters out in a long, jumpy monologue the plight of a group of Palestinians expelled from their homes in Galilee.  His lament of the past is an attempt to revive his dying friend Yunis, a hero of the Palestinian cause now plunged into a coma, who proves to be the central thread uniting the disparate stories.

Gate of the Sun is a novel extremely well documented. Indeed, in preparation for Bab al Shams: Gate of the Sun, Khoury collected testimonies from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: Shatila and Ayn al-Helweh.  He told Le Monde: "I was struck by the lack of historical documents reporting the Palestinian exodus (the "Naqba").  Scholarly research has been done by the Israelis.  It is always the victor who writes history.  The overlooked stories are left for the vanquished to tell, but in these miniscule stories lies the true suffering.  Literature can approach the hidden, the unspoken, the human."

Elias Khoury, one of the most distinguished writers and intellectuals in the contemporary Arab world, was born in '48 in Beirut.  Khoury received degrees in History and Sociology.  He founded several literary magazines and served as the cultural editor of the Beirut's daily al-Safir.  He is currently the editor of the weekly literary supplement of the newspaper al-Nahar.  He has taught at the American University in Beirut, Columbia University, and New York University. 

He is the author of eleven novels including Little Mountain ('87), Gates of the City ('93) and The Journey of Little Gandhi ('94), all published by The University of Minnesota Press, two plays (which have been performed in Beirut, Cairo, Paris, Vienna, and Basel), as well as several volumes of critical essays and short stories.  Many of his works have been published in France with Actes Sud and Arlea, including La Porte du Soleil (which was co-published by Actes-Sud and Le Monde Diplomatique in 2002). 

He was the artistic director of the Theatre of Beirut for six years and is now co-director of the Ayloul Theatre Festival in Beirut.  He is one of the 14 Arab intellectuals (including Edward Said and poets Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis) who signed a statement in protest of a neo-nazi conference that was to be held in Beirut.

Humphrey Davies holds a PhD in Near East Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.  He has spent 36 years working and living in the Arab world - 20 of these in Egypt, with lengthy periods in Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia.  He works out of Arabic (both formal and four dialects: Egyptian Arabic, Sudanese, Tunisian and Palestinian).

 His translations include:

• Ala' Al-Aswani, The Yacoubian Building ('Imarat Ya'qubian): American University in Cairo Press, 2004
• Naguib Mahfouz, Thebes at War (Kifah Tiba): American University in Cairo Press, 2003
• Sayed Ragab, El Far ('Rat') - a short story in Egyptian Arabic, published in Banipal Magazine (Summer 2002) 

In addition to his translation work, he has worked for the Ford Foundation in Cairo and Khartoum; for the Save the Children Federation; and for Oxford University Press. 

Humphrey Davies is based in Cairo.

Writers in Translation helped with the launch of the fourth 'PEN recommends' title - Elias Khoury's Gate of the Sun. On 7 November 2005 Elias Khoury was in conversation with Tariq Ali.