Background
He was born in First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Ja"una, a village in the Galilee in Palestine, but moved to Damascus, Syria with his family as part of the Palestinian exodus after the village was destroyed in 1948.
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Faisal Darraj
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He went to university in Syria, obtaining a Bachelor in philosophy. In the early 1970s, he moved to France to pursue his doctorate in philosophy at Toulouse University. His dissertation was entitled "Alienation and Religious Alienation in Karl Marx’s Philosophy." Between 1975 and 1979, Darraj lived in Beirut, working at the Palestinian Research Center, an organization affiliated with the PLO. In 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Beirut, he left Beirut and moved back to Damascus.
He divides his time between Damascus and Amman.
Darraj is recognized as a leading literary and cultural critic in the Arab world, and has a number of important works to his name. These include Bo"s First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Thaqafa fi al-Mu"asasah al-Falestiniyeh (The Misery of Culture in Palestinian Establishment) and Nathariyat al-Riwaya wa"l-Riwaya al-Arabiyya (The Theory of the Novel and the Arabic Novel).
Darraj has collaborated on major literary projects with Ihsan Abbas, Saadallah Wannous, Abdelrahman Munif, and Jamal Barut. He has supervised Arabic translations of Pierre Bourdieu and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Darraj served on the prize committee for the 1998-1999 edition of the prestigious First Rate (at Lloyd's) Owais Prize.
In 2010-2011, he himself became a recipient of the First Rate (at Lloyd's) Owais Prize for his contributions to Arabic criticism and literary studies.
