Khaled Khalifa

Khalifa was born in Aleppo in January 1st, 1964 in the village of Urm al-Sughra near the city of Aleppo, his family originates from the village of Maryamin in the Afrin region of the Aleppo governorate.[4]

Khalifa’s family is engaged in olive cultivation, and the production of olive oil, as well as in the trade of spare parts for trucks, cars and agricultural machines. He is the fifth child in a family of nine boys, four girls, two mothers, and a father who worked as a policeman until he retired in 1965. He studied in the city of Aleppo, where his family then resided, and graduated from Al-Mutanabbi High School in 1982. He continued his studies at the University of Aleppo and graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1988.[1][5][6]

Khalifa began his literary activity at fifteen, as a poet, when he published his first poems in the Al-Thawra (“Revolution”) newspaper, and took part in the University of Aleppo Forum, one of the most famous literature festivals in Syria.[5] This celebration attracted a large audience of students and city folks, before the authorities closed it down in 1988, under the pretext that leftist opposition politicians used its platform to publicize their ideas. [4]

Khaled Khalifa began writing novels at the age of twenty, and continued writing poetry as a way to exercise his language skills. He finished his first novel as a university student, but destroyed it immediately. That novel, he then felt, heavily borrowed other authors’ voices. He thus began the quest for his own literary voice. In 1990, soon after graduating and completing his military service in Damascus, he stopped drawing and writing poetry, devoting himself completely to novels and screenplays.[5]

As a screenwriter, Khalifa has written several television dramas, including Rainbow (Kaws Kozah) and Memoirs of Al-Jalali (Serat Al-Jalali), plus various documentaries, short films, and the feature-length film The Shrine Door (Bab al-Maqam).[7] His first novel, Haris al-Khadi'a[8] ("The Guard of Deception"),[4] was published in 1993. His second novel, Dafatir al-Qurbat[8] ("The Gypsy Notebooks"),[4] was suppressed by the Union of Arab Writers for four years after its publication in 2000.[8]

Khalifa spent thirteen years working on In Praise of Hatred (Madih al-karahiya), his third novel, which is about how the lives of one family are affected by the battle between the Syrian government and the Muslim Brotherhood.[8] It was published in Damascus in 2006, until it was banned by the Syrian government, when it was republished in Beirut.[4] Khalifa has stated these sort of book bans come from a bureaucracy which does not represent the higher levels of government,[2] and he favors negotiation between artists and Syrian authorities to facilitate freedom of speech.[9] He says his work is not intended to advocate any political ideology.[8]

Discussing In Praise of Hatred, he has stated: "above all, I wrote this novel in defense of the Syrian people and in order to protest against the suffering they have endured as a result of the religious and political dogmas that have tried to negate their ten-thousand-year civilisation."[7] In Praise of Hatred[4] was a finalist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) (2008).[8]

His fourth novel was La sakakin fi matabikh hadhihi al-madina ("No Knives in this City's Kitchens"), published in Cairo in 2013. It is about the "price that Syrians have paid under the rule of the Baath party" as headed by President Bashaar Al-Assad. It won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.[10] It was shortlisted for the IPAF in 2014.[11]

Death Is Hard Work, translated by Leri Price, was named a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature.[12]

No One Prayed Over Their Graves, Khalifa's novel, was longlisted for the IPAF in 2020.[1]

• 1993 Haris al-Khadi'a ("The Guard of Deception")
• 2000 Dafatir al-Qurbat ("The Gypsies' Notebooks")
• 2006 Madih al-karahiya (English trans. 2013, In Praise of Hatred)
• 2013 La sakakin fi matabikh hadhihi al-madina (English trans. 2016, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City)
• 2016 Al-mawt 'amal shaq (English trans. 2019: Death Is Hard Work)
• 2019 Lam yusil 'alayhum ahad (English trans. 2023: No-one Prayed Over Their Graves)
• 2022 Nisr 'ala al-Tawelah al-Mojawerah ("An eagle at the next table")

• Khaled Khalifa on Twitter