Renowned French-Lebanese Poet and Novelist Venus Khoury-Ghata Dies at 88

Paris: Renowned French-Lebanese poet and novelist Venus Khoury-Ghata has passed away at the age of 88. She was regarded as one of Lebanon’s foremost literary figures, alongside celebrated writers such as Khalil Gibran and Amin Maalouf. Over a distinguished career, she authored more than forty works of poetry and fiction. Though fluent in both French and Arabic, all her literary works were written in French. She passed away in France.

Venus Khoury-Ghata was born in 1937 in Bsharri, a mountainous region in northern Lebanon, into a Syrian Maronite Christian family. Her mother came from a farming background. In 1959, she was crowned Miss Beirut in a beauty pageant. During the intense years of the Lebanese civil war, she migrated to France with her father. After marrying French researcher Jean Ghata in 1972, she settled permanently in France. Her husband passed away in 1981.

The trauma and conflicts caused by the Lebanese civil war deeply influenced her writings, a theme that runs strongly through her body of work. Many of her books were translated into several world languages. Only one of her novels, A House at the Tip of Tears, was translated into English. The novel was translated into Malayalam by S. A. Khudsi under the title Kanneerthumbath Oru Veedu and published by Finger Books in 2021.

Khoury-Ghata received numerous prestigious French literary honours, including the Grand Prix de Poesie of the French Academy in 2009 and the Concorde Prize for Poetry in 2011, among more than a dozen major awards.