Novelist Elias Khoury, one of Lebanon’s most renowned writers and a fervent advocate of the Palestinian cause, has died at the age of 76.

Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death early on Sunday, said the Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily for which he worked.

Over several decades, Khoury produced a large body of work in Arabic that touched on the themes of collective memory, war and exile, alongside writing for newspapers, teaching literature and editing a publication linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Many of his books were translated into foreign languages, including French, English, German, Hebrew and Spanish.

One of his best-known novels, Gate of the Sun, tells the story of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948 during the war that coincided with Israel’s foundation.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven out of their homes during that conflict, in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic. The novel was made into a film by Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah.

“The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote referring to Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

Khoury also wrote about Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war in novels such as Little Mountain and Yalo.

Champion of the Palestinian cause

Born in Beirut on July 12, 1948, Khoury studied at the Lebanese University and later at the University of Paris, where he received a PhD in social history.

A backer of the Palestinians since his youth, Khoury was co-managing editor of the PLO-linked Palestinian Affairs magazine from 1975 to 1979, together with poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Khoury also headed the cultural section of the now-defunct Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, and the cultural supplement of the daily newspaper Annahar. He taught literature at several institutions in the United States, including New York’s prestigious Columbia University.

Khoury’s ailing health in recent years did not stop him from writing, publishing articles reposted on his Facebook page from his hospital bed.

On July 16, he published an article, titled A Year of Pain, recounting his time bedridden in hospital and enduring “a life filled with pain, which stops only to herald in more pain”.

He ended his piece by alluding to the Israeli war in the besieged Gaza Strip, which by then had raged on for more than nine months.

“Gaza and Palestine have been brutally bombarded for almost a year now, but they stand steadfast and unshakable,” Khoury wrote. “A model from which I have learned to love life every day.”