Khālid Khalïfah Boeken

A dogged, absurd quest through the nightmare of the Syrian civil war, Khaled Khalifa's Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination. Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is--after all--only a two-hour drive from Damascus. There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone. With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings' decision to set aside their differences and honor their father's request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way--as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed--will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them

From the National Book Award finalist Khaled Khalifa, the story of two friends whose lives are altered by a 1907 flood that devastates their Syrian village. On a terrible December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same. Hanna was once a wealthy libertine landowner who had built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. But with the loss of his home, wife, and community, he transforms, becoming an ascetic mystic obsessed with investigating the meaning of life. In No One Prayed Over Their Graves, we follow Hanna's life before and after the flood, tracing friendships, loves and lusts, family and business, until he is just one thread in the rich tapestry of Aleppo. Khaled Khalifa weaves a sweeping tale of life and death in the hubbub of Aleppine society at the turn of the twentieth century. No One Prayed Over Their Graves is a portrait of a people on the verge of great change: from the provincial village to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews live and work together, united in their love for Aleppo and their dreams for the future.

WINNER OF THE NAQUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times) Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. She and her siblings and mother are slowly choked in violence and decay, as their lives are plundered by a brutal regime. Set between the 1960s and 2000s, No Knives in the Kitchens of this City unravels the systems of fear and control under Assad. With eloquence and startling honesty, it speaks of the persecution of a whole society.

1980s Syria. Our young narrator is living a secluded life behind the veil in the vast and perfumed house of her grandparents. Her three aunts bring her up with the aid of their ever-devoted blind servant. Soon the high walls of the family home are unable to protect her from the social and political upheavals outside.

Über fast hundert Jahre lang beschreibt Khalifa die Entwicklung Syriens, indem er die Geschichten mehrerer Familien erzählt. Der Christ Hanna wächst am Ufer des Euphrat in einer muslimischen Familie auf, gemeinsam mit deren Sohn Zakaria. In die Tochter Suad mit den schönen langen Wimpern verliebt er sich. Doch Hanna und Zakaria sehnen sich nach einem freien Leben, das der gläubigen Muslimin Suad nicht gefällt. Mit ihren besten Freunden, dem Juden Azar und dem Christ William, ziehen Hanna und Zakaria nach Aleppo und errichten ein Freudenhaus, zu dem nur auserwählte Persönlichkeiten Zugang haben. Dort befinden sie sich auch an dem Tag im Jahr 1907, als der Fluss aus den Ufern tritt. Viele ihrer Familienmitglieder ertrinken in den Fluten. Es ist eine Zeit, in der Christen und Muslime noch nebeneinander auf dem Dorffriedhof begraben werden. Aber mit der Hochwasserkatastrophe setzen Veränderungen ein, die nicht nur das Leben der vier Freunde betreffen, sondern das ganze Land erfassen. Rückblenden und Erinnerungen brechen die chronologische Erzählweise auf, die Geschichten verzweigen sich. Hier ist ein großer Erzähler am Werk, der den Bilderreichtum der arabischen Sprache gekonnt mit Reflexionen über Leben und Tod verbindet und an die bedeutende kulturelle Vergangenheit Syriens erinnert, die heute so weit weg scheint.