Four books by writers from Syria, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Death Is Hard Work and In Praise of Hatred.
Khaled Khalifa, who lived in Damascus until his death in 2023, is among the Syrian novelists best known in English translation. Syrian novelists mostly write in Arabic, and for decades they have worked under censorship and the long rule of the Assad family, from 1970 until its fall in 2024. Aleppo and Damascus recur as settings, alongside the 1980s Islamist uprising and the war that began in 2011.
In Praise of Hatred, Khalifa's novel of an Aleppo woman and her conservative family, looks back on that uprising. No Knives in the Kitchens of This City charts a family's decline under fear and surveillance, and Death Is Hard Work sends siblings through checkpoints between Damascus and Aleppo to bury their father. Nihad Sirees's The Silence and the Roar portrays a writer living under a dictator's cult of personality in an unnamed city.
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Siblings try to bury their father across war-torn Syria, crossing checkpoints between Damascus and Aleppo and showing how the conflict reaches into everyday life.
An Aleppo woman recalls the 1980s Islamist uprising and its brutal suppression, seen through her conservative family's household.
A writer in an unnamed Aleppo-like city lives under a dictator's cult of personality, with a sharp picture of Syrian authoritarianism.
A family in Aleppo declines under fear and surveillance across several decades of Assad-era rule.
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