Adonis — Ali Ahmad Said Esber

Ali Ahmad Said Esber, known as Adonis, was born on 1 January 1930 in the village of al-Qassabin (Jableh district, Latakia) to a family of farmers; his father taught him to read and memorize poetry. In 1944 he recited a poem before President Shukri al-Quwatli during a visit to the region, and was rewarded with schooling; he graduated in philosophy from Damascus University in 1954. He adopted the name "Adonis" in his late teens.

In 1955 he was jailed some six months for political activity and membership in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party — where he met Muhammad al-Maghout — then moved to Beirut in 1956. There he co-founded the magazine "Shi'r" (1957) with Yusuf al-Khal and founded "Mawaqif" in 1968; both were pivotal in renewing Arabic poetry. He later took Lebanese nationality.

He earned a doctorate from Saint Joseph University in Beirut in 1973 with his thesis "Al-Thabit wa-l-Mutahawwil", a critical rereading of the Arab heritage that provoked wide debate. Among his major collections are "Aghani Mihyar al-Dimashqi" (The Songs of Mihyar the Damascene, 1961), a founding work of Arabic poetic modernism, "Al-Masrah wa-l-Maraya" (1968), and "Al-Kitab" (1995–2003).

He has lived in Paris since the early 1980s, teaching at the Lebanese University, the Sorbonne and elsewhere. In 2011 he became the first Arab laureate of Germany's Goethe Prize, and he has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.