Dubai: Syrian author Hanna Mina died today at the age of 94, according to official Syrian media.
He has been described as Syria’s “most prominent novelist”.
He was born in Latakia in 1924 while Syria was under French mandate and his works were inspired by the political situation in the country at the time.
After Syria’s independence, he moved to Damascus where he found a job as journalist in the 1950s working at a newspaper called Al Inshaa.
He was paid a monthly salary of a mere 100 Syrian pounds and lived in relative poverty working as a barber at the same time to make ends meet.
Mina was interested in the suffering of ordinary people and his earlier works tackled issues of socialism and classism.
He published his autobiography “On the sacks” in 1976.
Mina has authored more than 40 novels and in 2005 he was award the Arab Writer’s Prize.
