TEHRAN (IBNA) -- A compassionate novel, ‘Gate of the Sun’ (Bab al-Shams, 1998) by noted ‎Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, a skillful reshuffling of the ‘1001 Nights’ on Palestinians ‎sufferings and resistance has been translated into Persian and published. ‎
A literary work seen on par with the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, ‘Gate of the Sun’ has been translated into Persian by Seyyed Hamid-Reza Mohajerani and released by Tehran-based Rozaneh Publishing in 545 pages.
Drawing on the stories he gathered from refugee camps over the course of many years, Elias Khoury’s epic novel Gate of the Sun has been called the first magnum opus of the Palestinian saga.
Yunes, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. Keeping vigil at the old man’s bedside is his spiritual son, Khalil, who nurses Yunes, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, Khalil relates the story of Palestinian exile while also recalling Yunes’s own extraordinary life and his love for his wife, whom he meets secretly over the years at Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun.
The novel became a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year and a Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year.