Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
is a Palestinian writer, literary critic, historian, and translator. He was born in the village of Lubya in the Tiberias district of Palestine in 1938. Following the Nakba of 1948, he sought refuge in Lebanon with his family. They settled in the Wavell camp on the outskirts of the city of Baalbek, then in 1956 the family moved to Syria and settled in Damascus.
In 1960, he studied at Damascus University, Faculty of Arts, English Department, and was appointed as a teacher in UNRWA schools, for the English language subject, while he was still a student at the university. He finished his university studies in 1964. He lived his life in the Yarmouk camp, south of Damascus.
The beginnings of his works began to appear publicly in 1973 in the form of articles in Syrian magazines and newspapers, then his first book, “Essays on Pre-Islamic Poetry,” was published in 1975. Gradually, his other books began to appear in the fields of literary criticism until he became distinguished from others with his own approach, almost... It is a unique way of dealing with the studied text, whether poetry or prose.
Since the mid-seventies, his humble home in the Yarmouk camp has become a meeting place for many Syrian, Palestinian, and Arab creative people residing in Syria. They listened to him and his opinions in their creative writings. They even memorized some of his linguistic vocabulary, which became like a “registered trademark” in his name. We mention among them: “The Long Moment”, “The Obsession with the Secrets of Existence”, “The Seminary of As-Sadad”, “The Discharge of the Soul”, and “The Beautiful Kindnesses”.
He wrote more than thirty books on Arabic literature, criticism of Arabic poetry, and history, in addition to translations from the English language. He also wrote hundreds of articles in daily newspapers and periodical literary magazines.
In the midst of the bloody events that took place in Syria since March 2011, he immigrated from the Yarmouk camp to the Nahr al-Bared camp in Tripoli, Lebanon, in late 2012. He died on May 2, 2013 after a struggle with illness. He left a large legacy of books covering many aspects of the human sciences, including literary criticism and history and translation, in addition to his literary and poetic writings.
It must be noted that the late Youssef Sami Al-Youssef joined the 68th Battalion, whose training headquarters was in Harasta, east of the Syrian capital, Damascus, but he left it after a short period, heading to teaching and devoting himself to writing. He was an educator and a fine cultural treasure. Many people from his generation and the coming generations learned from his culture.
Source
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To