A Lebanese novelist, playwright, critic and a prominent public intellectual. He has published more than ten novels, which have been translated into several foreign languages, as well as several works of literary criticism. His novels have been noted for their complex approach to both political themes and more fundamental questions of human behavior. His famous novel, Bawwabat Al-Shams, or, The Gate of the Sun, has been transformed into a cinema movie in 2004. He has also written three plays. Between 1993 and 2009 he served as editor of Al-Mulhaq, the weekly cultural supplement of the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Nahar. In 2013, he competed for the Nobel Prize for Literature.