On the Relations of the Circle

“The surrealistic debut novel of the iconic Lebanese novelist … Khoury’s style here is highly impressionistic and shape-shifting, as if to echo the sense of dislocation and confusion Mansour experiences … Khoury’s sentences are rich with synesthetic imagery … [and] vivid passages of the bustle of Beirut … The stakes are consistently high, as Mansour travels the city and notes its abundance of graveyards. While other books describe post-Nakba Palestinian protest more plainly, this one evokes the displacement and heartache at its core. An eerie and lyrical vision of statelessness.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The salient quality of this wonderful novel is not found in plot summary. Though the story of an orphan in ’70s Beirut is compelling, Khoury’s execution of how a consciousness emerges is brilliant and nearly peerless … I’ve only experienced this level of vivid and necessarily linked surreal imagery in Sergei Parajanov’s film The Color of Pomegranates. Just as every frame of that film could be a (powerful) painting, each image you will encounter [in On the Relations of the Circle] can be studied in order to reveal the larger wonder of awakened being.“—The Brooklyn Rail

“An exquisite book, like a novel in a funhouse mirror, that reads like direct dictation from dream and nightmare alike. Written in sinuous, startling lines, every page displays Khoury’s signature keenness of perception about history, nation, and the self’s treacherous interior. This book is a crucial reminder that the world drawn askew can be the world drawn most precisely.” —Elisa Gonzalez

“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)

Elias Khoury was a public intellectual, novelist, essayist, and reportage writer who lived an exceptionally rich life. A staunch advocate for the Palestinian people, he consistently spoke out against dictatorships in the Arab world and beyond. In his youth, Khoury dedicated himself to caring for Palestinian refugees in camps near Amman and later joined Fatah.

He was a highly beloved and respected figure in Arabic literature. For many, his novel Gate of the Sun, translated by Humphrey Davies, proved to be a life-altering work. Khoury served as the editor of the cultural supplement for Al-Nahar, a prominent Lebanese newspaper. In this role, he fostered a vital platform for political discourse concerning the rebuilding of Lebanon in the aftermath of its civil war.

Khoury received the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun. The novel was also recognized as Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and was named a Notable Book by The New York Times. He was a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at New York University and also taught at Columbia University, the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the Lebanese American University.

Yasmeen Hanoosh

Yasmeen Hanoosh is an award-winning literary translator, an Arabic fiction writer, and a 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. Hanoosh is currently working on translating Khoury’s significant essay collection, The Ongoing Nakba, and the third novel in his influential Children of the Ghetto trilogy, his final work, titled A Man Like Me.

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