Khalil Sweileh

Khalil Sweileh (Arabic: خليل صويلح; born 1959) is a Syrian journalist and novelist.

He was born in the mainly Kurdish city of Al-Hasakah in northern Syria and studied literature at Damascus University.

[1] Sweileh received the Naguib Mahfouz Medal in 2009 for his novel Writing Love, translated by Alexa Firat and published in English in 2012.

[2] In his acceptance speech, Sweileh mentioned that as a village boy, his chance discovery of a tattered copy of Mahfouz's novel Khufu's Wisdom was partly responsible for inspiring his love of literature.

[3] His previous novels include Express Mail (2004), Do Not Blame Me (2006), and Zuhur, Sara, and Nariman (2008).