Yahya Yakhlif (Arabic: يحيى يخلف) (born 1944) is a Palestinian writer and a novelist.[1] He was born in Samakh, a Palestinian village that was abandoned during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, when Yakhlif was 4 years old. Consequently, Yakhlif and his family became displaced refugees.[2]
As an author and novelist, Yakhlif has published several novels and short story collections. His novel about the last days of Samakh, A Lake Beyond the Wind, was translated into English by Christopher Tingley and May Jayyusi and published by Interlink Books in 1998 in its Emerging Voices series. Ma' Al Sama, a more recent novel, also explores the condition of Palestinian exile. Ma' Al Sama was nominated for the 2009 Arabic Booker Prize.[3]