“Syria has no choice but hope.”

First awarded in 1990 to Orhan Pamuk and translator Victoria Holbrook for The White Castle, the Prize ran until 1995 and was then revived in 2000 with the support of Arts Council England, who continue to fund the award. The 2012 prize was won by Aharon Appelfeld and translator Jeffrey M Green for Blooms of Darkness. Khaled Khalifa’s In Praise of Hatred, banned in Syria, has made the longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013.

While the story is ostensibly a domestic one about the narrator and her wealthy household of aunts who must choose between a life of self-denying spinsterhood or rebellious marriage, at its core it is about violence: the religiously motivated violence of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the counter-violence inflicted by a secular government. The two forces are locked into a mutual cycle of hatred, each atrocity sparking the next.

The aunts are gloriously vivacious and nuanced creations, from Maryam, at war with her own “filthy and rebellious” body, to Marwa, a Juliet figure, chained to her bed to prevent her marrying an officer of the other sect. As party spies multiply, a geography teacher has her clothes torn off for failing a pupil from a Mukhabarat family. In the siege of Aleppo, a fugitive throws himself into a red-hot bakery furnace rather than risk torture. A secret police chief modelled on the president’s brother is a chilling cameo.

Khaled Khalifa’s In praise of hatred is now out in English!

-Some analysts see a growing influence of fundamentalists in the revolution. Even radical Islamists can fight in Syria.
‘No one can speak of Islamist influence. There is a movement of the whole people which covers all currents and is trying to organize itself to continue the struggle… Syrians have already made the decision to continue the revolution, which began pacifically, but in response tp the barbarism of the regime some groups has taken weapons. Most go on the streets unarmed. Therein lies the secret of the Syrian revolution, in the value of its people.