A stunning portrait of a young orphan living in Beirut on the eve of the Lebanese Civil War

"We need the voice of Elias Khoury - detailed, exquisite, humane - more than ever." - Naomi Shihab Nye

In the Beirut of Elias Khoury's first novel, children converse with sparrows, walk with pine trees, and embrace their branches like old companions. A young orphan named Mansour is trying to locate his beginnings. Twelve toes (no ten), a family name, and a father. "Every evening, we retell the story. The story has no ending." And so his tale takes shape again. Mansour exchanges candied almonds with a saint and speaks to a woman who would like to trade her eyebrows for his, captured by their beauty. He watches fava beans leap from a bowl and climb up his arm. With each curve of Mansour's dreams, Elias Khoury sets the coordinates for the questions and concerns that will radiate throughout his exquisite body of fiction. On the Relations of the Circle was published in 1975, the year the Lebanese Civil War began. Khoury's visions of the past, present, and future follow paths as unpredictable as the sun's rays. They beam and bend, his tales expand and contract, as if anticipating the outbreak of war. Mansour resists the fractures and erasures of war. He buys pens and notebooks, sketching a map of his city as he sees and feels it. "Mansour decides that life is beautiful, that the earth deserves the swaying of trees." Elias Khoury's recursive stories, glimpses, and dreams hold fast to Mansour's decision, offering a story of beauty and humanity just before it vanishes.

A public intellectual who wrote novels, essays, and reportage, Elias Khoury (1948-2024) led an exceptionally rich life. Khoury was an unflagging champion of the Palestinian people and spoke out against dictatorships in the Arab world and beyond. In his youth, he cared for Palestinian refugees in refugee camps outside of Amman, and later joined the Fatah. Khoury was one of the most beloved and respected practitioners of Arabic literature. For many readers, his novel Gate of the Sun (translated by Humphrey Davies) is a life-changing work. Khoury served as the editor of the cultural supplement of one of Lebanon's major newspapers, Al-Nahar, where he created a platform for political dialogue around the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war. He was awarded the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, which was named Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and a Notable Book by The New York Times. Khoury was a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at New York University, and taught at Columbia University, the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the Lebanese American University.

Translator bio:

Yasmeen Hanoosh is an award-winning literary translator, Arabic fiction writer, and professor of Arabic Language and Literature at Portland State University. She is the translator of Elias Khoury's debut novel, On the Relations of the Circle, and is currently at work on his seminal collection of essays, The Ongoing Nakba, and the third installment of his groundbreaking Children of the Ghetto trilogy, his last novel titled A Man Like Me.