Khaled Khalifa

Khaled Khalifa was a Syrian novelist, screenwriter, and poet who was nominated three times and shortlisted twice for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His works have often been critical of the Syrian Baathist government and have thus been banned in the country. He studied law at Aleppo University and began his literary activity at the age of fifteen by publishing his poems in the Syrian Ba’athist Al-Thawra newspaper. He also participated in the University of Aleppo Forum, one of the most famous literature festivals in Syria, before the authorities closed it down in 1988. He wrote his first novel, The Guard of Deception, in 1993, and his second novel, The Gypsy Notebooks, in 2000. His third novel, In Praise of Hatred, was about how the lives of one family are affected by the conflict in Hama between the Syrian government and the Muslim Brotherhood. It was banned by the Syrian government and was a finalist for the International prize for Arabic fiction in 2008. His fourth novel, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2013 and was also shortlisted for the International prize for Arabic fiction in 2014. His fifth and final novel, Death Is Hard Work, was published in 2016 and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2019. It tells the story of three siblings who try to fulfill their father's dying wish of being buried in his ancestral village, while facing the horrors of the Syrian civil war. Khalifa died of cancer in Damascus on 30 September 2023, at the age of 59. He was buried in the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery, where many prominent Syrian writers and intellectuals are also buried.