Hani al-Rahib

Al-Rahib wrote his last novel, I Have Drawn a Line on the Sand, in 1999 after Kuwait University, where he had been teaching, refused to renew his contract because of an article he wrote about Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in which he called for freedom of expression for writers. His last novel generated negative reactions among some Kuwaiti writers. He returned to Damascus in the summer of 1998.

This novel was published in 1989 in Beirut. The writer didn't use conversations but used meanings instead. It talks about two opposite worlds, the world of myths, dreams, desires, and obsessions born of the torments and barrenness of society, as described by the novelist Hassan Hamid, and the world of real and known history. It is set in multiple timelines like the historical timeline (World war 1 and 2 and the year 1946) and the psychological timeline which is evident in many of the characters in the novel, then there is the mythical timeline (represented by Faidah) and there is what Al-Rahib called the timeline of no time, that is represented by Darwish. It's a novel that talks about Arabs, on the experience of progress in the contemporary history of the Arab nation, which is not specific to one Arab country, so he used the names of personalities and countries with special significance derived from the history of the region.

He was expelled from the Arab Writers Union as far back as 1969, and was dismissed from his teaching position at Damascus University and demoted to a high school. In 1995, Rahib was forced out of the Arab Writers Union for a second time, claiming that he had called for the normalization of relations with Israel.

According to Salah Salah, existentialism prevailed in al-Rahib's first novels, (1961) Al-Mahzūmūn and Sharkh fi tarikh tawil (1970), some of his novels were obsessed with formal experimentation and striving to invent new methods of narration, as in his 1977 novel Sharkh fi tarikh tawil and Alf layla wa-laylatān. The two novels seemed influenced by the French New Wave. Hot political issues were read in the two novels. In Alf layla wa-laylatān, he dealt with more disappointments that resulted from the defeat suffered in the Six-Day War.

Hani Muhammad Ali al-Rahib was born in the village of Mashqita in Latakia Governorate to a poor farming family. In 1957 he won a Damascus University scholarship where he studied English language and literature at the same university. After a while, he won a scholarship from the American University of Beirut, to obtain a master's degree. He then continued his higher education in the United Kingdom, obtaining a doctorate in English literature at the University of Exeter. After that, he was appointed as a professor at Damascus University, then, after graduating in 1962, he was appointed as a teacher in Idlib Governorate. Al-Rahib's works attracted political attention and his views created issues that resulted in his dismissal from the Arab Writers Union in 1969. In 1970, he critically withdrew from the Syrian Baath party. He had to leave Damascus and moved to Kuwait and taught at Kuwait University for a time before returning to Damascus in 1998 where he died as a result of a terminal illness at the age of 60.

Apart from his fictional works, al-Rahib was known as a literary and academic critic, published his non-literary works in various Arabic magazines, and translated many works from English to Arabic. His father, Shaykh Muhammad Ali, was deaf-mute but "was able to communicate with others with expressive gestures and knew how to read and write". He worked as a tailor in the city of Latakia for some time, for the local feudal most of the time. His mother Nuzha was illiterate. He spent his childhood in poverty and nature. Five of his sisters died by 1945, followed by his father in 1950 and his mother in 1955. He went to the city of Lattakia for his secondary and high school studies. Starting in 1973, he was appointed as a teacher and then as an assistant professor in the Department of English at Damascus University. He got married for the first time in 1966 and divorced after ten years. He married again in 1977 and had a successful married life. Actress Waha Al-Raheb was his niece, daughter of his diplomat brother Helal al-Raheb.

Hani Muhammad-Ali al-Rahib (Arabic: هاني محمد علي الراهب, romanized: Hānī Rāhib or Hānī Rāheb; 30 November 1939 – 6 February 2000) was a Syrian novelist and literary academic who wrote a number of distinguished novels. The Defeated was his first novel, which was published in 1961 when he was 22 years old. In the same year, he won the Al-Adab magazine literature award. His second novel was titled A Crack in a Long History (1970) then came A Thousand and Two Nights in 1977, followed in the early 1980s by The Epidemic, which some critics chose as one of the 100 most important Arab novels published in the twentieth century, according to Al-Faisal Magazine.