Elias Khoury, a Lebanese novelist and distinguished professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, will visit campus March 7 to deliver a lecture and a reading from his most recent novel, “The Broken Mirror: Sinalcol.”
Khoury is one of the most influential voices of contemporary Arab literature. He has been writing works of fiction, literary criticism and political essays for more than four decades. Although most of his novels happen in the Middle East, he speaks with a universal language on the boundaries of violence, displacement, lust and longing.
Khoury will be reading excerpts from his novel at noon in the Author’s Corner on the second floor of the Illini Union Bookstore, 809 S. Wright St., Champaign. He will deliver a lecture, “A Continuous ‘Nakba’: Palestinians in Israeli Literature,” at 4 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium of Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana. His visit was organized by the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and his afternoon lecture is part of the Center for Advanced Study’s 2016 MillerComm lecture series. For more information, email csames@illinois.edu.