One of Syria's best-known writers. Mamdouh Udwan, poet, novelist, dramatis, critic and translator, was a rebel and a champion of liberty. He continued to be a contributor to the Arab press for the rest of his life. His first collection of poems, 'The Green Shadow' (1967), was the first of 27 small volumes. Then he published his first - of 24 - plays, 'The Man Who Did Not Fight'. In his major novel, 'My Enemies', he writes of Syria in the last days of Ottoman rule. In 1994, Mamdouh was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre in Washington DC, and in 1997 won the Jordanian Arar Prize for poetry. Mamdouh Udwan was born in Qayrun, near Masyaf in central Syria and came from a rural and Alawite backgrounds - he challenged the presumptions of the generation that preceded them. He died of cancer.