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Abbad Yahya is used to controversy. For the last five years, the young Palestinian novelist has been writing books that have been criticized for including sex and politically unpopular opinions.

Yahya, who's 28, expected similar complaints about his fourth novel, Crime in Ramallah, published in Arabic late last year, which chronicles the lives of three young men affected by a woman's murder in the city where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters.

"I thought the book may raise some noise and provoke writers, intellectuals or readers," he says. "But I was really shocked when I started to read what people are writing about me."

In February, angry Palestinians wrote on his Facebook page, and their own pages, that they wanted to lynch Yahya and burn bookstores and libraries carrying Crime in Ramallah.

They were especially outraged that one of the characters in the book, Noor, is a gay man who, in one scene, seems to be defiling the memory of Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader who remains a revered figure.

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