Halim Barakat

Halim Barakat (Arabic,حليم بركات), is an Arab novelist and sociologist. He was born in 1933 into a Greek-Orthodox Arab family ^[1] in Kafroun, Syria, and raised in Beirut. Barakat received his bachelor's degree in sociology in 1955, and his master's degree in 1960 in the same field. He received both from the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in social psychology in 1966 from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

From 1966 until 1972 he taught at the American University of Beirut. He then served as research fellow at Harvard University until 1973, and taught at the University of Texas at Austin in 1975-1976. From 1976 until 2002 he conducted research in the field of society and culture at The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies of Georgetown University.

Barakat has written almost twenty books and about fifty essays on society and culture in respected books and journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, the Middle East Journal, Mawakif and al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi. His publications are primarily concerned with difficulties facing modern Arab societies such as alienation, crisis of civil society, and a need for identity, freedom and justice. He has also published six novels and a collection of short stories. These are rich with symbolism and allegory to world events.^[2]