Khaled Khalifa, in an interview with Michael Safi for The Guardian, July 1, 2023 about his new book, ‘No One Prayed Over Their Graves’
The award-winning Syrian novelist on Aleppo, the city of his ‘soul’, his fascination with the late 19th century, and his youthful introduction to Chekhov.
While Khalifa was writing his new book, No One Prayed Over Their Graves, Aleppo was comprehensively destroyed in fighting between the Syrian government and rebels. His work is banned in Syria.

A million lives later, I cannot forgive what American terrorism did to my country, Iraq
Sinan Antoon, for The Guardian, March 19th, 2023
In early 2003, I was living in Cairo and carrying out research for my doctoral dissertation on a famous Iraqi poet who lived in my hometown, Baghdad, in the 10th century. But I was increasingly anxious about the Baghdad of the 21st century.

By Maya Jaggi, published by The Guardian, on April 15, 2020
Midway through Dima Wannous’s novel, the narrator recalls a neighbour who fell sick during a dire shortage of doctors and medicine. The woman’s daughter had to take time off work to hunt for a hospital bed. “So, silently, I begged my own mother not to fall ill,” she says, to “not contract a virus or other disease.”
As well as having a chilling resonance today, the anecdote offers a glimpse of daily life for millions of Syrians since the 2011 revolution. …

A review by Hisham Matar, for The Guardian, May 11th, 2019
Set three years into the Syrian civil war, the novel’s plot is compellingly simple. Bolbol, the deeply sensitive and conflicted protagonist, has just lost his father. He gathers his two older siblings, Hussein and Fatima, to help him honour their father’s last wish – to be buried in Anabiya, the family’s ancestral village, about 350km north of Damascus. Ordinarily, the journey would take under five hours; if it weren’t for the sad occasion it would be a pleasurable drive, with …

This collection of texts was commissioned and published by The Guardian, on September 12th 2015. Photo credit: Ed Alcock, MYOP Diffusion, The Guardian,
The refugee crisis, though long in the news, has suddenly captured the world’s attention. But what are the underlying causes, and what should individuals and governments do to help? Samar Yazbek responded (below) – along with Orhan Pamuk, Arundhati Roy, Elif Shafak, Ahdaf Soueif, Pankaj Mishra,

This excerpt was published by The Guardian on June 28, 2015.
Photo credit: The Guardian, Sedat Suna, EPA
The barbed wire lacerated my back. I was trembling uncontrollably. After long hours spent waiting for nightfall, to avoid attracting the attention of Turkish soldiers, I finally raised my head and gazed up at the distant sky, darkening to black. Under the wire fence marking the line of the border a tiny burrow had been dug out, just big enough for one person. My feet sank into the soil and the barbs mauled my back …