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In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one Syrian family collapses into tragedy and ruin. The mother, abandoned by her husband, struggles to raise her children alone. Her daughter Sawsan flirts with the militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. All are slowly choked in the fog of violence and decay, as their lives are plundered and their dreams wrecked by the brutal Assad regime. Set between the 1960s and 2000s, No Knives in the Kitchens of this City is a graceful and profound depiction of life under tyranny. Through the story of a single family, we read the disintegration of a whole society over half a century. This novel teaches us about grief, fear, and the end of beauty.>
About the author
Khaled Khalifa was born in 1964 in a village close to Aleppo, Syria. He is the author of several novels, including most recently,
Death Is Hard Work, longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
No Knives in the Kitchens of This City was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2013, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014, and was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association's National Translation Awards in the prose category in 2017. He lives in Damascus, a city he has refused to abandon despite the danger posed by the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Leri Price is a literary translator based in the UK. In 2017, her translation of Khaled Khalifa's No Knives in the Kitchens of This City (Hoopoe, 2016) was short-listed for both the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)'s National Translation Awards and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
