Lebanese writer Elias Khoury (1948 - 2024) passed away on Sunday 15 September at the age of 76, following a long illness. A talented writer and acerbic commentator on the socio-political reality of the Middle East, Elias Khoury dedicated his life and work to putting into words the identity, religious and territorial conflicts that were tearing this region apart, and their consequences for human populations.
Born in Beirut into a Greek Orthodox Christian family, he became involved in the Palestinian cause as a young student, joining the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and taking an active part in the activities of the National Movement, a Lebanese pro-Palestinian group.
At the start of the Jordanian civil war, Elias Khoury left Lebanon for Paris, where he studied social history at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris under the tutelage of Alain Tourraine. On his return to Lebanon, he contributed to the journal Palestinian Affairs. A friend of the poets Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish, Elias Khoury was also close to Edward Saïd, who invited him to teach at Columbia University in New York. He went on to work at a number of universities in Europe and the United States, and was also editorial director of the cultural section of the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir and editor-in-chief of the cultural supplement of the daily An-Nahar.
An outstanding storyteller, Elias Khoury has published more than 25 novels and essays, translated into many languages. Trained as a historian, Elias Khoury decided to write about the ‘continuous present’ of the Nakba, highlighting the grief and heartbreak but also the courage and dignity of uprooted peoples. Despite his lucid pessimism, his novels have inspired generations of young Palestinians to imagine other futures, as his friend Yehouda Shenhav-Sharabani recently recalled in an article.
Elias was a long-standing friend and collaborator of the IAS Nantes, where he was first Associate Resident and then Associate Member from 2023. Elias stayed at the Institute on several occasions and, in collaboration with his friend, the Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Sharabani, developed a research project on literature and translation in areas of conflict and colonial oppression. During their last visit between January and March 2023, Elias and Yehouda worked on the Hebrew translation of Elias's book The Absent-Present, the final part of his literary trilogy Children of the Ghetto. He took part in a presentation of his book at the Maison Julien Gracq in May 2019, the video recording of which is available on the IAS webpage.
We would like to pay tribute to Elias Khoury's talent and courage and celebrate a man we all appreciate at the Institute for his sympathy and humour. Our thoughts today are with Elias' wife Najla, his children, grandchildren and all those who loved him.
