BEIRUT: Novelist Elias Khoury, one of Lebanon’s most renowned writers and a fervent advocate of the Palestinian cause, died on Sunday from illness aged 76, sources close to his family told AFP. Khoury, who was born in 1948 to a Christian family in Beirut, died in the Lebanese capital where he had been hospitalized for months, the sources said.

Over several decades Khoury produced a large body of work in Arabic that touched on the themes of collective memory, war and exile, alongside writing for newspapers, teaching literature and editing a publication linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Many of his books were translated into foreign languages including French, English, German, Hebrew and Spanish.

One of his best-known novels, “Gate of the Sun”, tells the story of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948 during the

war that coincided with the Zionist entity’s foundation. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven out or expelled from their homes during that war, in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic. The novel was made into a film by Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah. Khoury also wrote about Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war in novels like “Little Mountain” and “Yalo”.

A champion of the Palestinian cause since his youth, Khoury was co-managing editor of the PLO-linked Palestinian Affairs magazine from 1975 to 1979, together with poet Mahmoud Darwish. Khoury also headed the cultural section of the now-defunct Lebanese newspaper As-Safir and the cultural supplement of the daily Annahar. He taught literature at several US institutions including New York’s prestigious Columbia University.

Khoury’s ailing health in recent years did not stop him from writing, publishing articles reposted on his Facebook page from his hospital bed. On July 16, he published an article titled “A Year of Pain”, recounting his time bedridden in hospital and enduring “a life filled with pain, which stops only to herald in more pain”.

He ended his piece by alluding to the Zionist war in the besieged Gaza Strip, which by then had raged on for more than nine months. “Gaza and Palestine have been brutally bombarded for almost a year now, but they stand steadfast and unshakable. A model from which I have learnt to love life every day,” Khoury wrote. – AFP