Syrian author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa, whose novels set in Aleppo memorialised a city ruined by civil war, has died aged 59.
The writer died from cardiac arrest at his home in Damascus, a close friend told the French news agency AFP.
Khalifa was one of Syria’s most celebrated contemporary novelists, though his six novels were banned in the country. “A poet of a single city, and through it a nation, his commitment to his homeland, to interrogating its history and inviting his readers to feel that history, was remarkable,” said Alex Bowler, publisher at Faber, the UK publisher of Khalifa’s work.
“This was coupled with his steadfast commitment to the freedoms and power of literature, despite the censorship and suppression he encountered,” he added. “Because of this he leaves a body of work that will last. But it cannot diminish today from the pure sadness we feel at his sudden passing.”
“What a loss for Arab literature,” Layla AlAmmar, author of Silence Is a Sense and The Pact We Made, posted on Twitter. “Khaled Khalifa was a giant and had so much more left to give.”
“He leaves books that will be read so long as there are Syrians,” added Robin Yassin-Kassab, author of The Road from Damascus.
Khalifa was born in 1964 and grew up in the outskirts of Aleppo, attending the city’s university. He finished a novel while studying, but he destroyed it because he felt it borrowed too heavily from other authors’ voices.
His first published novel, Haris al-Khadi’a (The Guard of Deception), came out in 1993. He published a second novel in 2000, but it was his third novel, In Praise of Hatred, published in 2006, that brought him international attention. It was translated to English by Leri Price – who would go on to translate three further Khalifa novels – in 2012.
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.”
Khalifa’s fifth book, Death Is Hard Work, is set three years into the civil war, and chronicles a journey taken by three siblings who embark on a 350km road trip to bury their father. The novel was a National Book award finalist for translated literature in 2019.
In 2012, Khalifa was beaten when members of the shabiha militia and plainclothes security forces dispersed a funeral procession he was participating in. “My left hand is broken. I write with my right hand, but typing on the computer is difficult now,” the author said at the time.
His sixth novel, No One Prayed Over Their Graves, was published in July this year. Set between 1880 and 1950, the novel follows the friendship between two men, one Muslim and one Christian, as the world around them transforms and tragedy strikes.
Khalifa was also an accomplished screenwriter. His first screenplay, The Story of Al-Jalali, was released as a TV series directed by Haitham Hakki. Rainbow, City Folks and Relative Quietness followed, the latter focusing on the experiences of Arab journalists during the Iraq war.
