As Khalifa’s “Death is hard work” was a finalist of  the Premio Gregor Von rezzori award 2020, his previous novel “There are no knives in the kitchens of the city” gains attention in German speaking territory, and was featured in a dedicated 4 minutes film on 3 Sat TV!

Listen to the interview here.

Interviewed by Lena Bopp for FAZ, April 13, 2020
In his novels, Khaled Khalifa goes to court with the Syrian regime. Nevertheless, the writer still lives in Damascus and voluntarily returns to his home country from every trip abroad. How can that be?
 

 Lena Bopp interviews Sinan Antoon for FAZ

 January 2020

Two final questions translated here:

Your last novel “The book of collateral damage” (“Index”) is (…) a kind of archive, a catalog full of things that once existed in Iraq and that are lost
I imagine the terrible concept of collateral damage as a black hole that swallows up everything: houses, people, animals, trees. Everything that life is. The book is also about the possibility of archiving. 

Published by Neue Zürcher Zeitung, May 11, 2018

In a night-black novel Khaled Khalifa carries the dreams of his homeland to the graveA man named Nightingale. He would have to be a singer and a lover fluttering through a scenario of magical realism or an old Oriental poem. Not one, however, to whom the concern for the corpse of his father, who is already decaying, gives the feeling that he is still a creature capable of being found with a little backbone, and not merely “jelly-mass.”

Published by Literatur Spiegel, May 2018
A crazy journey with a corpse through a country at war: Khaled Khalifa’s Syrian novel Death Is Hard Work
 
It is very easy to tell stories during wartime. One is surrounded by monstrosities, every day a new one.
And something else – which can be found in Syrian author Khaled Khalifa’s new novel, Death Is Hard Work, now available in German.