Elias Farkouh

Elias Farkouh was born in Amman in 1948. A novelist and short story writer, he has published seven short story collections - including Ihda wa Eshrouna Talqa lil-Nabeyy (‘Twenty One Shots for the Prophet’), which won the 1982 Jordanian Writers Association Award, Tuyour Amman Tuhalliq Munkhafida (‘Amman's Birds Sweep Low’, 1981), Al-Saf'a (‘The Slap’, 1997), and Huqoul Al-Zilal (‘Fields of Shadows’, 2002) - and three novels. His first novel, Kamaat Uz-Zabad, translated as Foam Statures, won the State Encouragement Award in 1990. His third novel ‘The Land of Purgatory’ was shortlisted for the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction and won the Jordanian Writers' Association Award of the novel in 2008. Elias has also won the State Meritorious Award (1997) and the Mahmud Sayf Ed-Din Irani Award (awarded by the Jordanian Writers' Association), both for his short story writing. His work in literary translation, Other Fires, a volume of short stories by women writers from Latin America, appeared in 1999. In 1991 he founded Dar Azminah, his own publishing house.