Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury

Watan offers a curated selection of used Palestinian books, ranging from works of non-fiction to prose, poetry to novels, and more. This offering is an extension of our Palestinian Women's Library (available for free use at our Orland Park location).

Gate of the Sun is the first true magnum opus of the Palestinian saga. Through the passing of the beloved midwife and matriarch of the Shatila refugee camp outside Beirut, the listener enters a world of displacement, fear, and tenuous hope. A doctor tells a story to a man in a coma in an attempt to keep him alive. The patient, Yunes, is from Galilee, where he left Nahla, the love of his life. The novel unfolds at his bedside through Dr. Khalil’s intimate and haunting flights of memory.

Khoury humanizes the complex Palestinian/Israeli struggle for us, shedding light on the turbulent history with love and empathy. Khoury opens up a whole new territory, envisioning a place where confronting pain and humiliation might lead, if not to reconciliation, then at last to finding an element of the other in one’s self. “Us” and “Them” become inextricably entwined through this realigned 1001 Nights . Originally published in Beirut in 1998, the novel has been a sensation throughout the Arab world, in Israel, and throughout Europe.