Shehadeh on Khouri

Raja Shehadeh reviews Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun for The Nation, finding the novel full of “novelty and power,” but also “cluttered” and “overcrowded.”

Palestinians tend to expect that every work about Palestine must encompass the whole of the Palestinian experience. It is unfortunate that Khoury, who is not Palestinian, was also motivated to achieve this impossible goal. Still, Gate of the Sun is important for trying to capture the Palestinian experience during and after 1948. Although it overreaches, the novel is unique and powerful, and Archipelago Books is to be commended for making it available to an American audience.

Read the review in full here.