Celebrated Syrian author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa dies aged 59

Syrian author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa, whose novels set in Aleppo memorialised a city ruined by civil war, has died aged 59.

...Khalifa was one of Syria’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, though his six novels were banned in the country.

...The writer died from cardiac arrest at his home in Damascus, a close friend told the French news agency AFP.

...In Praise of Hatred is set in 1980s Aleppo, against the backdrop of the conflict between the Assad regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, and centres on a young girl who turns towards fundamentalism. The novel was shortlisted for the International prize for Arabic fiction in 2008.

His fourth novel, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, won the Naguib Mahfouz literature prize, a prestigious Egyptian award, in 2013. It was also shortlisted for the International prize for Arabic fiction. The birth of the novel’s narrator coincides with the 1963 Ba’athist coup, and the book follows friends, family, enemies and lovers back and forth across three generations. “This multiple focus and enormous scope turns the setting, Aleppo, into the novel’s central character,” wrote Yassin-Kassab in his Guardian review.

Though the writer moved to Damascus in the late 1990s and tried to write about the Syrian capital, “after 50 pages” he “felt it was not good writing,” he told the Observer in a July 2023 interview. “I don’t know the fragrance of Damascus. So I turned back to Aleppo, and I accepted: OK, this is my place. I’ll write all my books about Aleppo. She is my city and resides deep in myself, in my soul.” READ MORE from THE GUARDIAN