Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in 1936 in the then Acre (Akka), British Mandate of Palestine. His father was a lawyer, and sent Ghassan to French missionary school in Jaffa.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Kanafani and his family were forced into exile, a part of the Palestinian exodus. Their home city became part of Israel.

The family initially fled north to neighbouring Lebanon, less than 11 miles north, but soon moved on to Damascus, Syria, to live there as Palestinian refugees. Kanafani completed his secondary education in Damascus, receiving a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) teaching certificate in 1952.

The same year he enrolled in the Department of Arabic Literature at the University of Damascus and began teaching in UNRWA schools in the refugee camps. Before he could complete his degree, Kanafani was expelled from the university and exiled to Kuwait for his political affiliations - a result of his involvement in the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), a left-wing pan-Arab organization to which he had been recruited by Dr. George Habash when the two met in 1953. Some biographers, however, do not believe Kanafani was ever expelled, but simply moved to Kuwait, where he worked as a teacher and became more politically active. In Kuwait he edited al-Ra'i (The Opinion), which was an ANM-affiliated newspaper, and also became interested in Marxist philosophy and politics.

In 1960, he relocated once again to Beirut, where he began editing the ANM mouthpiece al-Hurriya. In 1961, he met Anni Høver, a Danish children's rights activist, with whom he had two children. In 1962, Kanafani briefly had to go underground, since he, as a stateless person, lacked proper identification papers. He reappeared in Beirut later the same year, and took up editingship of the Nasserist newspaper al-Muharrir (The Liberator). He went on to become an editor of another Nasserist newspaper, al-Anwar (The Illumination), in 1967.

The Palestinian membership of the ANM evolved in 1967 into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), of which Kanafani became a spokesman. In 1969, he drafted a PFLP program in which the movement officially took up Marxism-Leninism. He also edited the movements newspaper, al-Hadaf (The Target), which he had founded in 1969, writing political, cultural and historical essays and articles.

The 8th of July, 1972 Kanafani entered his car as he was headed for the office for al-Hadaf. The car was rigged with a bomb, and he died instantly. His pen was as threatening to Israel as the guerrillas rifles, if not more. His legacy lives on among the Palestinians, and he is considered one of the greatest modern Arabic authors.

Ghassan Kanafani began writing short stories when he was working in the refugee camps. Often told as seen through the eyes of children, the stories manifested out of his political views and belief that his students' education had to relate to their immediate surroundings. While in Kuwait, he spent much time reading Russian literature and socialist theory, refining many of the short stories he wrote, winning a Kuwaiti prize.

Kanafani published his first novel, Men in the Sun in Beirut in 1962. He also wrote a number of scholarly works on literature and politics. His thesis, Race and Religion in Zionist Literature, formed the basis for his 1967 study On Zionist Literature.

Considered a major modernizing influence on Arab literature and still a major figure in Palestinian literature today, Kanafani was an early proponent of complex narrative structures, using flashback effects and a chorus of narrator voices for effect. His writings focused mainly on the themes of Palestinian liberation and struggle, and often touched upon his own experiences as a refugee. He was, as was the PFLP, a Marxist, and believed that the class struggle within Palestinian and Arab society was intrinsically linked to the struggle against Zionism and for a Palestinian state.

Also an active literary critic, Kanafani's seminal work, Palestinian Literature Under Occupation, 1948-1968, introduced Palestinian writers and poets to the Arab world. He also wrote a major critical work on Zionist and Israeli literature. In the spirit of Jean-Paul Sartre, he called for an engaged literature which would be committed to change.

Influence

Kanafani is credited with having coined the term "resistance poetry" to refer to Palestinian poetry written in Occupied Palestine, a now recognized genre within the Arabic literary sphere. Mahmoud Darwish, who dedicated one of his own works, The Palestinian Wedding, to Kanafani, writes in an introduction to a volume of Kanafani's literary critical studies that, "It was Ghassan Kanafani who directed Arab public opinion to the literature of the occupied land [...] the term 'resistance' was not associated with the poetry until Ghassan applied it, thereby giving the term its special significance."

Works in English

• Kanafani, Ghassan (Translated by Hilary Kilpatrick): Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories [ISBN 0-89410-857-3] 1998.
• Kanafani, Ghassan and Barbara Harlow, Karen E. Riley: Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories. [ISBN 0-89410-890-5] 2000.
• Kanafani, Ghassan, with Roger Allen, May Jayyusi, Jeremy Reed: All That's Left to You [ISBN 1-56656-548-0] Interlink World Fiction, 2004

Works in Arabic

Note: Some Names are roughly Translated

• mawt sarir raqam 12, 1961 (??? ???? ??? 12, A Death in Bed No. 12)
• ard al-burtuqal al-hazin, 1963 (??? ???????? ??????, The Land of Sad Oranges)
• rijal fi-sh-shams, 1963 (???? ?? ?????, Men in the Sun)

• al-bab, 1964 (?????, The Door)
• 'aalam laysa lana, 1965 (????? ??? ???, A World that is Not Ours)
• 'adab al-muqawamah fi filastin al-muhtalla 1948-1966, 1966 (??? ???????? ?? ?????? ??????? 1948-1966, Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine)
• ma tabaqqa lakum, 1966 (?? ????? ???, All That's Left to You)
• fi al-adab al-sahyuni, 1967 (?? ????? ????????, On Zionist Literature)
• al-adab al-filastini al-muqawim taht al-ihtilal: 1948-1968, 1968 (????? ????????? ??????? ??? ???????? 1948-1968, Palestinian Resistance Literature under the Occupation 1948-1968)
• 'an ar-rijal wa-l-banadiq, 1968 (?? ?????? ????????, On Men and Rifles)
• umm sa'd, 1969 (?? ???, Umm Sa'd)
• a'id ila Hayfa, 1970 (???? ??? ????, Return to Haifa)
• al-a'ma wa-al-atrash, 1972 (?????? ???????, The Blind and the Deaf)
• Barquq Naysan, 1972 (????? ?????, The Apricots of April)
• al-qubba'ah wa-l-nabi, 1973 (?????? ??????, The Hat and the Prophet) incomplete
• thawra 1936-39 fi filastin, 1974 (???? 1936-39 ?? ??????, The Revolution of 1936-39 in Palestine))
• jisr ila-al-abad, 1978 (??? ??? ?????, A Bridge to Eternity)
• al-qamis al-masruq wa-qisas ukhra, 1982 (?????? ??????? ???? ????, The Stolen Shirt and Other Stories)
• 'The Slave Fort' in Arabic Short Stories, 1983 (transl. by Denys Johnson-Davies)