Adonis

Ali Ahmad Said Esber, known as Adonis, was born on 1 January 1930 in Qassabin, near Latakia, the eldest of six children of an Alawite peasant family; his father taught him the Quran and classical poetry. At fourteen, a poem recited before President Shukri al-Quwatli won him a scholarship. A graduate in philosophy from Damascus in 1954, imprisoned the following year for his membership of the Syrian Nationalist Party, he settled in Beirut in 1956, co-founded the journal Shi'r in 1957 and founded Mawaqif in 1968. Living in Paris since 1985, he received the Goethe Prize in 2011.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetrySongs of Mihyar the Damasceneأغاني مهيار الدمشقيAdonis · 1961Literature