Ghassan Kanafani was born in the city of Acre, Occupied Palestine in 1936. Following the Nakba in 1948, he and his family were forced into exile and settled in Damascus, where Kanafani completed his secondary education. Afterward, he began teaching art at schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and enrolled at the University of Damascus in the Arabic Literature Department. However, before he could graduate, he was expelled from the university due to his political ties with the Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN), an organization that would later develop into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1956 he moved to Kuwait, where he continued to teach and became an editor for Al-Rai newspaper that supported MAN. Four years later, he moved to Beirut and became the editor for MAN’s newspaper Al Hurria and also for Al Muharir in 1962. The following year he published his famous novel Men in the Sun, a tragic story of three Palestinian refugees who died while attempting to cross the Iraqi border into Kuwait in the hope of finding jobs. In 1964, Kanafani joined the ranks of the newly founded Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Following the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War in 1967, his writings shifted from pessimistic to hopeful, with a focus on creating change through resistance. After the war, he joined the PFLP and became its official spokesperson, and founded its newspaper Al Hadaf, and worked as its editor until his death. A journalist and a novelist, Kanafani also produced drawings and paintings. Much like his writings, his artworks also address the Palestinian cause and the suffering of its people, depicting figurative and partially abstract Palestinian refugees using pale, expressive colors. Also, his works include cityscapes and Arabic Calligraphy that also endorse the right of freedom for his native country. On July 8, 1972, Kanafani was murdered by a bomb planted in his car by Israel’s Mossad spy agency in Beirut, where he is buried. Considered one of the most important Palestinian writers, his works were translated in into 17 languages and published in more than 20 countries.

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