Khoury is, before everything else, a writer of stories.He loves them because there's no end to them. And because their meanings, very much like the reasons they're worth telling, get richer and more contradictory.

It is a further exploration of the themes of exile, dislocation, and identity. Elias Khoury's earlyworks show him 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.

Beginning

  I. The Stranger 9

 II. The Search for the Suitcase 19

III. The Coffin and the King 31

 IV. The Third Woman 41

  V. ThisSea 51

 VI. And There Was Weeping 63

VII. The Storyteller Said 77

VIII. The Stranger 89