Culture minister mourns death of Kharrat

Culture Minister Helmy el Namnam has mourned novelist Edward el Kharrat, who died early Tuesday at the age of 89.

It is a big loss, Namnam said, adding that Kharrat was such an outstanding novelist whose works have enriched the cultural life in Egypt.

Kharrat perfectly depicted features of the Egyptian society in his novels, the minister noted.

Kharrat is sure a figure of the modern Egyptian literature, Namnam said.

As a translator, Kharrat also contributed a great deal the Arab library through his translated novels and books, the minister added.

Many seminars had been organized to tackle works of Kharrat that usually received high acclaim from critics, he further said.

He is considered the god father of many novelists who followed in his footsteps, Namnam said.

Kharrat was born in Alexandria in 1926. He studied law at Alexandria University and worked briefly in banking and insurance. He was also actively engaged in left-wing politics and spent two years in jail from 1948–50. He moved to Cairo in the mid-1950s where he worked for a time as a translator at the Romanian embassy.

Kharrat has been described as "one of Egypt's most influential fiction writers" and "one of the most important writers in the Arab world". He was a leading figure among the group of Egyptian writers known as the Sixties Generation, and founded and edited the literary journal Gallery 68, considered to be the mouthpiece of that generation.

As a writer, his first book was a collection of short stories called High Walls, published in 1958/59.

Kharrat also translated a number of foreign literary works into Arabic, including Tolstoy's War and Peace.

He won several prestigious literary awards including the Sultan al Owais Prize and the Naguib Mahfouz Medal.

Sources: MENA