Hani al-Rahib

Hani al-Rahib was a Syrian novelist and literary academic who wrote a number of distinguished novels. The Defeated was his first novel, which was published in 1961 when he was 22 years old. In the same year, he won the Al-Adab magazine literature award. His second novel was titled A Crack in a Long History (1970) then came A Thousand and Two Nights in 1977, followed in the early 1980s by The Epidemic, which some critics chose as one of the 100 most important Arab novels published in the twentieth century, according to Al-Faisal Magazine. Apart from his fictional works, al-Rahib was known as a literary and academic critic, published his non-literary works in various Arabic magazines, and translated many works from English to Arabic. Al-Rahib's works attracted political attention and his views created issues that resulted in his dismissal from the Arab Writers Union in 1969. In 1970, he critically withdrew from the Syrian Baath party. He had to leave Damascus and moved to Kuwait and taught at Kuwait University for a time before returning to Damascus in 1998 where he died as a result of a terminal illness at the age of 60.