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.