No One Prayed Over Their Graves
Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price (translation)The story of two friends whose lives are altered by a flood that devastates their Syrian village.
On a December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna & Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, & places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.
Hanna was once a wealthy libertine, a landowner who built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure & excess. But with the loss of his home, wife, & community, he transforms, becoming an ascetic mystic obsessed with death & the meaning of life. In No One Prayed Over Their Graves, we follow Hanna's life before & after the flood, tracing friendships, loves & lusts, family & business, until he is just one thread in the rich tapestry of Aleppo.
Khaled Khalifa weaves a sweeping tale of life & death in the hubbub of Aleppine society at the turn of the twentieth century. No One Prayed Over Their Graves is a portrait of a people on the verge of great change—from provincial villages to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, & Jews live _ work together, united in their love for Aleppo & their dreams for the future.
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Khaled Khalifa was born in 1964 near Aleppo, Syria, the 5th child of a family of thirteen siblings. He studied law at Aleppo University & actively participated in the foundation of Aleph magazine with a group of writers & poets. The magazine was soon closed down by Syrian censorship. Active in the arts scene in Damascus where he lives, Khalifa is a writer of screenplays for television & cinema as well as novels that explore Syrian history. His 2019 novel Death Is Hard Work was a finalist for the National Book Award.