In Stella Maris, Adam has decided to write his story, that of the “New Adam”, which, he would like to believe, starts when he runs away from home at 15, to go as far as possible from his childhood in the ghetto of Lydda (My name is Adam, Children of the ghetto 1), and from his mother Manal. The New Adam is in a painful quest of a restful identity: “I want to become a Jew”, he says. “This is impossible” he is told. 

A detective story set on the background of family and sectarian feuds, The king of India, explores with the right dose of irony, the meaning of attachment to the land.

Interview by Tom Zoellner, for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Published February 18th, 2019
ELIAS KHOURY MIGHT BE the Lebanese version of what James Michener is to the United States, or Carlos Fuentes is to Mexico— a big-hitting novelist who aims not merely for the human heart but also for the soul of a nation. His latest book, My Name Is Adam, is the first volume of a projected trilogy about the nakba — the Arabic term for the forced removal of Palestinians from the newborn state of Israel in 1948. The protagonist …

A review by Avraham Burg, for the Haaretz, May 2018
It’s very hard to review something so close to perfection. About all one can do after such an engrossing read is describe, quote, compare and reflect. Elias Khoury’s remarkable literary skill and the brilliant Hebrew translation of Yehouda Shenhav-Sharabani (a work of art in itself) make “Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam” one of the most poignant and important novels of recent years. After it, no words are needed, if only because it is one of the most eloquent works ever …

Review by  Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, for En Attendant Nadeau / Mediapart, published May 2018
There are subjects that force the novel to reinvent itself. As the narrator of the last book of Elias Khoury puts it, “I am writing a novel that is unlike any other, because it belongs to a literary genre that has no name and I doubt that it exists “.

Published by Midwest Book Review, October 2018
Farid Abou Char arrives in Beirut on a hot summer morning with his manuscript, looking for a publisher. He is turned down by all of them; nobody reads anymore, he is told. Instead, he accepts a job as a proofreader at the famous old print house Karam Bros., allegedly established in 1908. Disappointed by the menial tasks of checking catalogs and ad copy, Farid secretly hopes that his book will eventually be published.