Elias Khoury Books In Order

Little Mountain

Written in the opening phases of the Lebanese Civil War 1975 1990, Little Mountain is told from the perspectives of three characters: a Joint Forces fighter; a distressed civil servant; and an amorphous figure, part fighter, part intellectual. Elias Khoury’s language is poetic and piercing as he tells the story of Beirut, civil war, and fractured identity.

City Gates

City Gates was first published in Arabic in 1981, and in English in 1993. It is a further exploration of the themes of exile, dislocation, and identity. Elias Khoury’s early works show him finding the distinctive voice that explodes in his epic Gate of the Sun. A stranger arrives at the gates of a city from which everyone appears to have fled. The once besieged and now deserted city is Beirut. City Gates is a fable of displacement and a visionary tale about the consequences of civil war in the Middle East.

The Journey of Little Ghandi

‘Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury.’ Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times From the author of Gate of the Sun and ‘one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab World’ The Washington Post Book World comes the many layered story of Little Gandhi, or Abd Al Karim, a shoe shine in a city fractured by war. Shot down in the street, Gandhi’s story is recounted by an aging and garrulous prostitute named Alice. Ingeniously embedding stories within stories, Little Gandhi becomes the story of a city, Beirut, in the grip of civil war. Once again, as John Leonard wrote in Harper’s Magazine, Elias Khoury ‘fills in the blank spaces on the Middle Eastern map in our Western heads.’ Elias Khoury is the author of twelve novels including Gate of the Sun, Yalo, Little Mountain and City Gates. He is a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, and editor in chief of the literary supplement of Beirut’s daily newspaper, An Nahar. From the author of Gate of the Sun and ‘one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab World’ The Washington Post Book World comes the many layered story of Little Gandhi, or Abd Al Karim, a shoe shiner in a city fractured by war. Shot down in the street, Gandhi’s story is recounted by an aging and garrulous prostitute named Alice. Ingeniously embedding stories within stories, Little Gandhi becomes the story of a city, Beirut, in the grip of civil war. Once again, as John Leonard wrote in Harper’s Magazine, Elias Khoury ‘fills in the blank spaces on the Middle Eastern map in our Western heads.’ ‘How to tell the story of a city Beirut that has changed from the Switzerland of the East, to its Hong Kong, then its Saigon, and finally its Calcutta. Elias Khoury has succeeded, as only a great novelist can do.’ Le Monde ‘Elias Khoury is an artist giving voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages.’ Edward W. Said ‘How to tell the story of a city Beirut that has changed from the Switzerland of the East, to its Hong Kong, then its Saigon, and finally its Calcutta. Elias Khoury has succeeded, as only a great novelist can do.’ Le Monde

The Kingdom of Strangers

This Mosaic portrayal of its author’s native Lebanon besieged by civil war…
expands into a generalized examination of chaos and despair suffered by families everywhere…
. Kirkus Reviews

Gate of the Sun

Gate of the Sun: Bab al Shams is the first true magnum opus of the Palestinian saga. Through the passing of the beloved midwife and matriarch of the Shatila refugee camp outside Beirut, the reader enters a world of displacement, fear, and tenuous hope. A doctor tells a story to a man in a coma in an attempt to keep him alive. The patient, Yunes, is from Galilee, where he left Nahla, the love of his life. The novel unfolds at his bedside through Dr. Khalil’s intimate and haunting flights of memory. Khoury humanizes the complex Palestinian/Israeli struggle for us, shedding light on the turbulent history with love and empathy. Khoury opens up a whole new territory, envisioning a place where confronting pain and humiliation might lead, if not to reconciliation, then at least to finding an element of the other in one s self. Us and Them become inextricably entwined through this realigned 1001 Nights. Originally published in Beirut in 1998, the novel has been a sensation throughout the Arab world, in Israel, and throughout Europe.

Yalo

‘A heartbreaking book and sometimes hypnotic in beauty…
. With both gentle and cruel images, Khoury wrote a lamentation for the generation that was corrupted and lost its children, and for the children themselves.’ Haaretz

Elias Khoury’s most recent novel propels us into a fantastic universe of skewed reality that leaves us breathless to the last page. We follow the path of a young man, Yalo, who is growing up like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut during the long years of the Lebanese civil war. Living with his mother, who ‘lost her face in the mirror,’ he falls in with a dangerous gang whose violent escapades he treats as a game. The game becomes a frightening reality, however, when Yalo is accused of rape and imprisoned. He is forced to confess to crimes of which he has no recollection. As he writes, and rewrites, he begins to grasp his family’s past and recall all that his psyche has buried, and the true Yalo begins to emerge.

Elias Khoury is the author of twelve novels, four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. Editor of the cultural pages of Beirut’s An Nahar, Khoury also is a global distinguished professor at New York University. Gate of the Sun was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2006.

Peter Theroux translated Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt, Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of the Alley, and Alia Mamdouh’s Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad. He has lived and traveled throughout the Middle East and is currently based in Washington, DC.

The Journey of Little Gandhi

‘Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury.’ Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times From the author of Gate of the Sun and ‘one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab World’ The Washington Post Book World comes the many layered story of Little Gandhi, or Abd Al Karim, a shoe shine in a city fractured by war. Shot down in the street, Gandhi’s story is recounted by an aging and garrulous prostitute named Alice. Ingeniously embedding stories within stories, Little Gandhi becomes the story of a city, Beirut, in the grip of civil war. Once again, as John Leonard wrote in Harper’s Magazine, Elias Khoury ‘fills in the blank spaces on the Middle Eastern map in our Western heads.’

White Masks

With empathy, tenderness, and pain, Elias Khoury tells the tragedy of the Lebanese Civil War through the eyes and lives of five Beirutis. Khalil Ahmed Jaber is found dead in a refuse heap, and we follow a journalist investigating the crime. We learn about Khalil from his widow, an engineer, a concierge, the garbage collector who discovered his body, and a doctor. Beirut itself is also a transfigured victim, buried in the rubble of violence, destruction, and inhumanity. Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun deemed a ‘masterwork’ by The New York Times was a 2006 New York Times Notable book and was named Best Book of the Year by both The Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle. His Yalo inspired the Los Angeles Times to assert that ‘the beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury.’