City Gates

Drawing on the traditions of Arabic storytelling, Elias Khoury's fable of displacement follows a stranger as he arrives in a gated city and wanders through its labyrinthine streets in search of the city's future--and his own.

City Gates was first published in Arabic in 1981, appearing in English in 1993. It is a further exploration of the theme of exile, dislocation, and identity. His early works show Khoury 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.