On the Relations of the Circle

“What a blessing to still get new Khoury books to read even after he’s gone … [On the Relations of the Circle] unfolds like the fragmented memories of childhood, tracing the orphan Mansour through his encounters with his world and surroundings, mystical and material. A gorgeous and poetic tale.” —Samia Saliba, Mizna

“Despite Elias Khoury’s known wizardry as one of the great contemporary narrators, his referential bedrock can always be found in the full corpus of Arabic poetry, texts he knew intimately. Yasmeen Hanoosh’s utterly lucid rendering of his first novel finally squares the circle of Khoury’s magnificent achievement. Deeply enmeshed in his own language and culture, he embraced the world fully, with all its pain, suffering, and wonder, while never ceasing to demonstrate that true human dignity emerges from active resistance to all forms of oppression.” —Ammiel Alcalay

“Elias Khoury’s first novel, On the Relations of the Circle, exists within its own spacetime. Set on the eve of the Lebanese Civil War, gravity shifts in these pages, and the physics of the work follows that of dreams. Gorgeous and ethereal, this is a must read from a beloved master of Arabic fiction.” —Hannah Lillith Assadi

Elias Khoury (1948-2024) was a public intellectual who wrote novels, essays, and reportage. He was an unflagging champion of the Palestinian people and spoke out against dictatorships in the Arab world and beyond. In his youth, he cared for Palestinian refugees in camps outside of Amman and later joined Fatah.

Khoury was one of the most beloved and respected practitioners of Arabic literature. His novel Gate of the Sun is considered by many readers to be a life-changing work. He served as the editor of the cultural supplement of Al-Nahar, one of Lebanon’s major newspapers, where he created a platform for political dialogue around the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war.

Gate of the Sun was awarded the Palestine Prize and was named Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and The San Francisco Chronicle. It was also recognized as a Notable Book by The New York Times.

Khoury was a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at New York University. He also taught at Columbia University, the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the Lebanese American University.

About the Translator:

Yasmeen Hanoosh is an award-winning literary translator, Arabic fiction writer, and professor of Arabic Language and Literature at Portland State University. She is the translator of Elias Khoury’s debut novel, On the Relations of the Circle. She is currently working on his seminal collection of essays, The Ongoing Nakba, and the third installment of his Children of the Ghetto trilogy, his last novel titled A Man Like Me.

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