Khoury launches NYU cultural season

Elias Khoury, the distinguished Lebanese novelist, is to speak at the first NYU Abu Dhabi Institute lecture.

ABU DHABI // New York University, which will open a campus in the capital in 2010, has launched a yearlong series of lectures, conferences and seminars that will bring prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals to the city. The first event, a lecture by Elias Khoury, the Lebanese novelist, is scheduled for tonight. Mr Khoury is a distinguished professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the university and the editor of the cultural supplement of the Beirut newspaper, An Nahar. He divides his time between Beirut and New York and is the author of 11 novels, among them Gate of the Sun, which The Village Voice called "the first true magnum opus of the Palestinian saga". The book was made into a film of the same name by the director Yousry Nasrallah in 2004. Philip Kennedy, director of the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, will be interviewing Mr Khoury on stage. "He has become a great writer," Dr Kennedy said. "He writes very mature, really quite difficult, challenging, very rewarding, rich, densely layered novels that are a celebration of storytelling." Mr Khoury's novels take place in the Middle East; several chronicle the lives of ordinary people living in war-torn countries. Gate of the Sun describes the experience of the Nakba and half a century of Palestinian dispossession through tales told by a doctor to his friend, an elderly fighter, who lies in a coma. Palestinians refer to the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, when describing their exodus in 1948. Khoury's most recent work to be translated into English, Yalo, is a coming-of-age novel about a boy growing up in Beirut during the country's 1975-1991 civil war. It was banned in several countries for its frank depiction of torture in the prisons of Middle Eastern states. Khoury began his literary career in the 1970s in the company of writers such as Adonis and the late Mahmoud Darwish, a close friend with whom Khoury edited the journal, Palestinian Affairs. Tonight's event will focus in part on Gate of the Sun, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Future lectures includes a panel discussion of the US presidential election, including the panellist Bob Shrum, a Democratic political strategist; a discussion of the late Edward Said's The World, the Text, and the Critic, with Marina Warner, the novelist and cultural historian; and a discussion with Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel laureate, of her novel The Pickup. The Institute will also sponsor the Muslim Cultures of Mumbai Film Festival. "Part of what I'm really excited about is co-operation with Kalima, the translation foundation," said Dr Kennedy. "It has the potential of making Abu Dhabi a translation capital." Dr Kennedy said the institute had planned events around several texts being translated, including Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. The institute will also host several conferences this year, including one on education and human development, another on Africa and the Gulf, and one on carbon policy and global administration law. Tonight's lecture will take place from 6 to 8pm at Al Mamoura Auditorium, in the Aldar Properties Building on Muroor Road. [e-mail]