The Children of the Ghetto My Name is Adam

Lit by the sublime beauty and tragedy of classical Arabic poetry, a Palestinian falafel seller in New York sets out to shape fragments of his family history

Weaving history, memory, and poetry, this unforgettable novel—and the 1st book in a trilogy—provides a sprawling memorial to the Nakba and the strangled lives left in its wake. 

Long exiled in New York, Palestinian ex-pat Adam Dannoun thought he knew himself. But an encounter with Blind Mahmoud, a father figure from his childhood, changes everything. It is when Adam encounters his former teacher that Adam discovers the story he must tell.

Ma’moun’s testimony brings Adam back to the first years of his life in the ghetto of Lydia, in Palestine, where his family endured thirst, hunger, and terror in the aftermath of unspeakable horror.

With unmatched literary craft and empathy, Khoury peels away layers of lost stories and repressed memories to unveil Adam’s story.

Oscillating between two narrators—the self-reflexive "Elias Khoury" and Adam himself—Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam engages real (and invented) scholarly texts, Khoury’s own work, and Adam’s lost notebooks in an intertextual account of a life shadowed by atrocity.

Elias Khoury is the author of 13 novels, 4 volumes of literary criticism, and 3 plays. For 12 years he was a Prof. of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at New York University and has also taught at Columbia University. He won the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, also named a Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and a Notable Book by The New York Times. As Though She Were Sleeping won France's inaugural Arabic Novel Prize. In 2016, he was awarded the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity. About the translator: Humphrey Davies is a translator of Arabic fiction, historical, and classical texts. His translations include Elias Khoury's Yalo, Naguid Mahfouz's Thebes at War and Midaqq Alley, Alla Al-Aswany's The Yacoubian Building and Friendly Fire, Hamdy el-Gazzar's Black Magic, Mohamed Mustagab's Tales of Dayrut, and the four-volume 19th century Arabic experimental novel, Leg over Leg, by Faris Al-Shidyaq. A two-time winner of the Banipal Prize, he is also the recipient of the English PEN Writers In Translation Award. Davies lives in Cairo.