Khaled Khalifa obituary
Photograph: Bilal Hussein/AP
The writings of the Syrian author Khaled Khalifa, who has died aged 59 of a heart attack, depict a world of bloody conflict, but one where flowers still bloom. In his books, which are often read as eulogies for Syria, and especially his beloved city of Aleppo, the beauty of the past or an imagined, secular future are set against a deplorable reality, but despite all the atrocities in a country torn by war, the personal triumphs over the political, and the poetic over the grisly.
He wrote six novels, wide in scope, epical and multigenerational. Four of them have been translated into English, by Leri Price, including No Knives in the Kitchens of This City (2013), which won the Naguib Mahfouz medal for literature.
Set between 1963, when the Ba’ath party took power, and the early 21st century, the novel explores the regime’s systems of fear and control through its portrayal of the lives of three generations in the once-beautiful Aleppo, whose fate follows the arc of the family’s tragedy.
A peripheral narrator gives a second-hand account of lives and cities disintegrating. Each character becomes much larger than themselves, a representative of a group whose aspirations, as in the case of the gay uncle, or delusions, as in the case of the upper-class mother who is on a “civilising mission”, clash with the harsh reality of living under a dictatorship.
Khaled’s work is particularly notable for its portrayal of fully fledged female Arab characters, such as Sawsan, a daughter in the novel. At first she uses her sexuality to empower herself, then attempts to conform, but is ultimately defeated, living as she does in the shadow of a tyrannical regime.
His 2016 novel Death Is Hard Work is a “diabolical road trip” set in 2014, three years into the Syrian civil war. On his father’s death, the sensitive protagonist, Bolbol, and two of his siblings, Hussein and Fatima, take a journey to honour their parent’s last wish, which is to be buried in his ancestral village of Anabiya, about 200 miles north of Damascus. In normal circumstances the drive should take about three hours, but instead it takes three days and numerous bribes in a country ruled by opposition groups and rival factions. The decomposition of the father’s corpse becomes a metaphor for the tragedy still unfolding in the country.
In 2019 Price won the Saif Ghobash Banipal prize for Arabic literary translation for her translation of the novel, and it was a finalist in the National Book Award for translated literature.
Metaphor is used again in Khaled’s final novel, No One Prayed Over their Graves (2023), this time using the catastrophic overflowing of a river that flooded Aleppo in 1907 to represent the numerous calamities that have struck Syria since, and to reflect on “the predicament of life itself”, as Khaled wrote. Kirkus Reviews described it as “a small epic that blends magic realism with grim realities”.
Khaled was born in Urum al-Sughra, a village near Aleppo, into a family involved in olive and olive oil production, as well as the trading of agricultural machines. He was the son of Amina and Khalifa Abdulrazak; Khalifa was a policeman who had retired by the time Khaled was one year old. After Al-Mutanabbi high school, Khaled, who had begun writing poetry aged 15, studied law at Aleppo University, graduating in 1988.
Following military service in Damascus, he began writing in earnest. In 1990 he co-founded Alef literary magazine, focusing on emerging voices and styles in Syria. A chapter of his first book, The Guardians of Treachery, was published in the first issue, with the novel itself coming out in 1993. The magazine was closed by the regime that year, but not before publishing the first chapter of what would become his third novel, In Praise of Hatred. It was finally published in Beirut in 2008, after his books had been banned in Syria.
The novel depicts the Syrian regime’s ruthless suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and the destruction of the city of Hama, raising important questions about the conflict between fundamentalists and dictatorships. It was shortlisted for the international prize for Arabic fiction and in 2013 longlisted for the Independent foreign fiction prize.
In addition to his novels, Khaled wrote numerous scripts for film and television, including the popular TV series Aljalali Family Life and Letters Written By the Rain, which were both watched widely throughout the Arab world.
As peaceful demonstrations began in 2011, Khaled supported the revolution and the aspirations of the Syrian people. Despite the harassment and the travel bans he was subjected to, or the physical assault that led to his arm being broken in one of the protests, he never left Damascus and could not stay away from it for long periods, even when he held residencies in different parts of the world, such as at Harvard and Durham universities.
I first met Khaled in 2014 in Durham, at the launch of the art and writing collection Syria Speaks, and again in 2022 when, as a recipient of the Banipal visiting writer fellowship we set up to encourage dialogue with the Arab world through literature, he arrived at St Aidan’s College, Durham University, where I am a creative writing fellow. Khaled was suave, a bon vivant with a great sense of humour, and befriended everyone he met in our community.
The same year, he published a collection of thoughts on writing and isolation, Eagle on the Next Table. During the covid pandemic, he also began painting again, an activity he had enjoyed as a young man, and at the time of his death was preparing for a solo exhibition in Bahrain.
He is survived by seven brothers and three sisters.
• Khaled Khalifa Abdulrazak, author, born 1 January 1964; died 30 September 2023