Death of Syrian Khaled Khalifa, owner of “Death is hard work”.

Syrian writer and novelist Khaled Khalifa died on Saturday at the age of 59.

Khaled Khalifa is known for his novels “Fame of Hate”, “No Knives in the Kitchens of This City”, “Death is Hard Work” and “No One Blesses Them”.

The Aleppo-born novelist won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature from the American University in Cairo in 2013 for his novel “No Knives in This City’s Kitchens,” which was also shortlisted for the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

In 2008 his novel “Price of Hatred” was shortlisted for the same award, and “He Didn’t Get Them” was longlisted for the award in 2020.

Last September, his novel, “No One Arrived at Them”, translated into English, was longlisted for the US National Book Award.

Khalifa said following an interview in Cairo that his novel “No Knives in the Kitchens of This City” had been shortlisted for what is known in cultural circles as the “Arab Booker”. , his job is not to be gentle with traditional concepts or to hide facts.” Instead, he must present the anatomy of society and its fundamentalist views. His job is to dig beyond the eye, to dig into space. and the self.”

He believed that it was necessary to try to make the Arabic novel a part of the world literary scene “through translation and awards”.

His novel “The Fame of Hate” expounded on the political organization of the Syrian Baath Party, and “No Knives in the Kitchens of This City” presents an anatomy of Syrian society and a deep excavation of place and self over 200 years. In the city of Aleppo, he underwent changes that he saw as “robbing it of its soul.”

In his works, Khalifa traced the urban history of the city of Aleppo and the devastation it had suffered over the past fifty years. It is a disaster not only for the place but also for the people, the places are not destroyed alone, the place destroys its inhabitants,” said the late author.

In one of his latest publications, Khaled Khalifa published his last article last Wednesday which was published in the journal “NewspaperHoms, the city of laughter reduced to ruins and ruins.

In his essay, he reviewed the extent of the destruction to the city, which he described as the “World Capital of Laughter”, and enriched it with his oral stories that told the history of men and stone, as the novelist was inspired. Through the architecture of places and souls.

The Syrian novelist routinely wished readers to “read with joy” his works, cautioned them against “too much sadness,” and characterized the respective novelist’s works by the cities we find ourselves in when we leave.