Closed Gate

by Sayed Gouda

Sayed Gouda’s Closed Gate juxtaposes the Tian’anmen Square Massacre in Beijing with the sufferings of Palestine. But while the novel’s narrative builds slowly and irreversibly towards its climactic conclusion in June 1989, the sufferings of Gaza are experienced in snatches, dreams, and traumatic flashes of sudden prose, as if to suggest that here is a drama that is not concluded – as it surely isn’t.

187 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 14, 2015

About the author

Born in Cairo in 1968, Sayed graduated from the Faculty of Languages in Cairo and the Beijing Languages Institute in Beijing, majoring in Chinese language. He won the faculty first prize in poetry in 1990, and published his first book of poetry in Cairo the same year. His latest book of poetry was published in Egypt recently by Merit Publishers.

Sayed has been living in Hong Kong since 1992, where he organizes a monthly Arabic poetry session. He has translated a large number of Chinese and English poems into Arabic and they were published in Akhbar Al-Adab – a literary newspaper -- in a special edition about poetry in China and Hong Kong.