Exhibition of Palestinian novelist’s works opens at Katara today

Katara – the Cultural Village will organise an exhibition featuring the life and works of renowned Arab novelist Ghassan Kanafani during the Katara Festival of Arabic Novels, scheduled from today until Thursday.

The exhibition at Building 18 (Gallery 1) will showcase 32 works introducing the life and literary journey of Kanafani, the Palestinian revolutionary novelist, from his birth in Acre, in April 1936 until his assassination by Israeli intelligence agencies in Beirut on July 8, 1972.

The exhibition will shed light on his life in exile, as his family first moved to Lebanon when he was 12 years old and then to Syria, where they settled. There, Kanafani obtained his secondary certificate in 1952 and enrolled in the Department of Arabic literature in the University of Damascus.

In 1955, he moved to Kuwait where his literary career flourished. He served as editor in one of the newspapers in Kuwait, writing under the name “Abul Izz.”

In 1962, Kanafani’s novel, Men in the Sun (Rijal fi-a-shams), considered to be one of the most admired works in modern Arabic fiction, was published to great critical acclaim.

Return to Haifa (A’id lla Hayfa) which came out in 1970 is the story of a Palestinian couple living in the Palestinian town of Ramallah which was occupied in the Six-Day war.

In Umm Sa’ad (1969), Kanafani creates the portrait of a mother who encourages her son to take up arms as a resistance knowing well that it would eventually led to his death.

The exhibition will also showcase critical studies on the novels of Kanafani and his novels that were converted into films, dramas and TV productions.

Alongside the exhibition, a seminar on Kanafani will be held with participation of Dr Khaled al-Huroub, Palestinian writer and academician, Qassim Houl, Iraqi film producer and a friend of Kanafani, Jordanian novelist Samiha Khrais and Palestinian writer and academic Dr Rami Abu Shihab.