City Gates was first published in Arabic in 1981, and in English in 1993. It is a further exploration of the themes of exile, dislocation, and identity. Elias Khoury's early works show him finding the distinctive voice that explodes in his epic Gate of the Sun.

A stranger arrives at the gates of a city from which everyone appears to have fled. The once besieged and now deserted city is Beirut. City Gates is a fable of displacement and a visionary tale about the consequences of civil war in the Middle East.

"Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury."--Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times

From the author of Gate of the Sun and "one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab World" (The Washington Post Book World) comes the many-layered story of Little Gandhi, or Abd Al-Karim, a shoe shine in a city fractured by war. Shot down in the street, Gandhi's story is recounted by an aging and garrulous prostitute named Alice.

Ingeniously embedding stories within stories,...

Rashid al-Daif's provocative novel Who's Afraid of Meryl Streep? takes an intimate look at the life of a recently married Lebanese man. Rashoud and his wife struggle as they work to negotiate not only their personal differences but also rapidly changing attitudes toward sex and marriage in Lebanese culture. As their fragile bond disintegrates, Rashoud finds television playing a more prominent role in his life; his wife uses the presence of a television at her parents' house as an excuse to spend time away from her new home. Rashoud purchases a television in the hopes of luring...