Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa, author of several novels that placed him among the most recognized contemporary authors in his country, died on Saturday evening in Damascus at the age of 59, a source close to the family told AFP.
The Aleppo-born writer, known for his critical stance towards the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, remained in his country despite the repression and war that broke out in 2011.
Khalifa was awarded for his third novel “In Praise of Hate”, nominated in 2008 for the International Arabic Novel Prize and in 2013 for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and has also been translated into several languages.
The book tells the story of a young Syrian from Aleppo, raised in the purest Muslim tradition, who believes she will find her freedom by joining a fundamentalist movement that introduces her to the ‘jihadist’ struggle.
In 2013, Khalifa won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Prize from the American University of Cairo and in 2014 he was nominated for the International Arabic Novel Prize for his fourth novel “No Knives in the Kitchens of This City”, which has also been published in other publications . languages.
In 2016, the author published “Death is a Chore,” a dark account of the Syrian tragedy, the English edition of which was a finalist in the United States for the 2019 National Book Award in the translated literature category.
His other literary works include “No One Prayed for Them” (2019), “The Keeper of the Lure” (1993) and “The Bohemian’s Notebooks” (2000).
Khaled Khalifa is also the author of television series that were very successful in the early 1990s.
His death was marked by artists, intellectuals and journalists on social media, as well as political activists in Syria and beyond.
“The strong emotion that took over social media at the announcement of this horrific news is not only proportionate to his great talent as a writer, but also to the deep sympathy aroused by his warm personality, brimming with love for life,” Farouk wrote Mardam Bey. the French publisher of three of his novels.
Source: DN
