Halasā, Ghālib

Ghalib Halasa (Arabic: غالب هلسا; December 3, 1932 – December 17, 1989) was a Jordanian novelist, short story writer, literary critic, translator, and political activist. He was a prominent literary figure in the Arabic-speaking world during the 20th century. Some of Halasa's most influential novels include al-Dhahik (Laughter), al-Su’al (The Question), and Sultana. He was also a long-time member of the Communist Party, no matter what country he was living in. Halasa's views awarded him a life of exile, spending many years in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. He died in Damascus at the relatively young age of 57, after which his body was returned to Jordan, where he had not been for 34 years (he left Jordan in 1955). As someone with great command of literary technique and theory, on top of his exceptionally fluid style, Halasa's writings combine smooth reading with complex structuring. This was because he had the ability to draw on diverse narrative techniques and literary tradition. According to comparative literature professor Walid Hamarneh, Halasa wanted to "[utilize] modern and post-modern techniques in novel writing, while at the same time preserving the great insights and creative achievements of the nineteenth-century realists."