Review by Olivia Snaije, for The National, February 25th, 2019

Khalifa, who lives in ­Damascus and has remained in Syria throughout the war, tells The National that the inspiration for his novel came from a personal experience. “In 2013, I had a heart attack and I was in the hospital and I thought about what would happen to me and my family if I died,”

Yasmina Jraissati, RAYA, is among the three finalists of the London Book Fair International Excellency Awards 2019, in the Literary agents category. The winner will be announced in a ceremony at the London Book Fair, on Tuesday March 12th, 2019.
“The shortlist for The London Book Fair International Excellence Awards 2019 has been announced, with USA leading the way with five nominations, closely followed by Brazil and India with three each – and 26 countries represented.
The awards, held in partnership with the UK Publishers Association (PA), celebrate publishing success in seventeen categories, representing the best publishing …

A review by Sam Sacks, for the Wall Street Journal, Februay
Khaled Khalifa’s “Death Is Hard Work” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 180 pages, $25) begins with an old man’s dying wish: that his children bury him in the family plot in the town of his birth, a few hundred kilometers from the capital. It might be a reasonable request in normal times, but this is contemporary Syria, where to walk to the market is to risk being killed. “Better to tend to the dead,” the man’s son Bolbol decides in resignation; “after all, …

A review by David Ulin for the Los Angeles Times, February 8th, 2019
“If you really want to erase or distort a story,” Khaled Khalifa declares in his astonishing new novel “Death Is Hard Work,” “you should turn it into several different stories with different endings and plenty of incidental details.” He’s referring to the salutary comforts of narrative. This — or so we like to reassure ourselves — is one reason we turn to literature: as a balm, an expression of the bonds that bring us together, rather than the …