BEIRUT: Newspaperman, dramatist, translator, poet and icon of Beirut’s avant-garde, Ounsi El Hage died Tuesday at the age of 76. The Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported he had been in frail health for the past two months. Born in 1937, Hage was the son of journalist and translator Louis El Hage and Marie Akl, from the Jezzine village of Qaitouleh. He was educated in Beirut, first at the Lycée Français, later at La Sagesse (aka Hikmeh) High School. Hage’s stories, essays and poems began to appear in literary magazines in 1954, when he was still a teenager.

Hage launched his journalistic career two years later when he was made director of the cultural page of Al-Hayat, which was then the Arabic-language sister publication of The Daily Star. [Link]