Centre for Palestine Studies Annual Lecture
The Nakba in the Present
Elias Khoury
6.30pm, Wednesday 2 May 2018
Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS University of London
Russell Square WC1H 0XG
Admission Free – All Welcome
In this year 2018 marked by two competing 70th anniversaries – that of the creation of the state of Israel and that of the Palestinian Nakba – the CPS Annual Lecture will be delivered by Lebanese writer, novelist, university professor and prominent public intellectual Elias Khoury.
In his lecture, Elias Khoury will discuss the following themes:
1) The Nakba as ethnic cleansing, and how it has been depicted in Israeli and Palestinian Literatures;
2) The Nakba as a settler-colonial process that is still ongoing;
3) The error in comparing the Nakba to the Holocaust, and Edward Said’s concept of ‘the victims of the victims’;
4) The Nakba as an open book.
Elias Khoury has published 13 novels, translated into 15 languages. He has taught in several universities, including Columbia University and New York University (NYU), and is the editor of the Arabic equivalent of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
His novel Bab Al Shams (Gate of the Sun) was praised by Edward Said and made into a film. In The Guardian, Maya Jaggi commented: ‘a character dreams of writing a “book without a beginning or end… an epic of the Palestinian people” … Khoury’s monumental novel is in a sense that groundbreaking book’.
Wen-chin Ouyang, SOAS, will present Elias Khoury’s literary achievements.
Chair: Gilbert Achcar, SOAS
Organised by: Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS.
Information: E vp6@soas.ac.uk
