The Shubbak Festival will host award winning writer and novelist Elias Khoury, deemed one of the leading figures in Arabic and Lebanese literature, on Sunday, 26 July, at the British Library in London. Khoury will discuss his writings with award winning author and academic Marina Warner.

Author of Gate of the Sun, Khoury will read from a selection of his novels.

The event programme is developed in partnership with Saqi Books and the British Library, supported by the British Council, the Open Society Foundation, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, the Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation for Publishing, and Banipal.

Khoury, also a distinguished Lebanese critic, was editor for Shu’un Falastin (Palestine Affairs) with the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish during the 1970s. He then headed Karmal, and later was editor of the cultural section of Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar.

Khoury's best-known works include The Little Mountain: The Journey of Little Gandhi, and the masterpiece-turned-epic-film, Gate of the Sun, directed by Yosri Nasrallah. His book Sina Al-Koll won Khoury the UNESCO Sharjah Award for its contribution to Arab culture.

Shubbak is a festival of contemporary Arab culture, founded in 2011 by the mayor of London. It connects London audiences and communities with contemporary Arab culture through premieres and commissions of visual arts, film, music, theatre, dance, literature, architecture and debate.