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Drawing on the traditions of Arabic storytelling, Elias Khoury's fable of displacement follows a stranger as he arrives in a gated city and wanders through its labyrinthine streets in search of the city's future--and his own.City Gates was first published in Arabic in 1981, appearing in English in 1993. It is a further exploration of the theme of exile, dislocation, and identity. His early works show Khoury finding the distinctive voice that explodes in his epic Gate of the Sun.A stranger arrives at the gates of a city from which everyone appears to have fled. The once besieged and now deserted city is Beirut. City Gates is a fable of displacement and a visionary tale about the consequences of civil war in the Middle East.