Titles

• A strawberry-spotted handkerchief | Mandil aala al frawla 2022
• A Sleepless Giraffe in Damascus | Al hay al russi 2019 – view details
• The badal | Al-badal 2017
• An equal measure | Bittasawi 2014
• Where is Safed, Youssef? |  Aina Taqaa Al Safad Ya Youssef 2008
• An Ireland Salmon | Salamon Irlandi 2004
• A White Cloud in the Window of the Grandmother | Gaima Baidaa fi Shubak Al Gadda 1998

Biography

Khalil Alrez is Syrian novelist born in 1956 currently living in Belgium. After a degree in Arabic literature from the University of Aleppo, Khalil moved to Russia from 1984 to 1993 to study theater; he also learned the Russian language while there. He worked in Russia as a translator and radio host. Khalil published 9 novels and 1 play and has also translated various works from Russian into Arabic.

Alrez’s novel “A Sleepless Giraffe in Damascus” was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2020.

In the press

“A Sleepless Giraffe in Damascus”

“A sagacious, deep novel … A sleepless giraffe in Damascus is a novel of the imagined and the real, casting a glimmer of light on the darkness of war and life.”– (Al Akhbar)

“Khalil Alrez amazes us with his language that creates events; it is a language that is fresh, reckless, fast, that races against time and surrounds it as it masterfully constructs its world.”– (The New Arab)

“Khalil Alrez has presented fine art in a narrative space full of touching tales and scenes, as if we had just come out of a captivating fantasy movie.”– (Independent Arabia)

 “A kind of dark comedy or satirical tragedy… One of the most elegant and significant narrative creative works I have read in recent years.”– (Rai’ Al Youm)

 “The reader will never relax, but will anxiously turn the pages with amazement and enjoyment. … With excellent pictorial and descriptive ability, Alrez presents several cinematic scenes in which comedy and black comedy take their turns.”– (Awad media)

“The novel contains many … scenes overflowing with sweetness that make us stand before them as we stand in front of a painting, contemplating its meanings and melting within the images of beauty scattered in it.” — (Al Ketaba)

Cessions

• A Sleepless Giraffe in Damascus (2019)

World rights available

[Updated September 2022]