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?
 

By Janneken Øverland, in Bokmagasinet, Norway, June 2019
There are no knives in the kitchens of the city is the brilliant, depressive, rolling and falling history of a family  from Aleppo starting in 1960 to 2000.

Published by Avvenire, March 20, 2018
In his work the Syrian writer can not break away from the tormented city: “Despite everything, mine has never been a country prone to fanaticism: plural identity is an ancient value.”

Published by Il Manifesto, March 28, 2018
The novel about a prisoner’s life, a prisoner of violence but also of the thousand unpardonable compromises that a dictatorship imposes on oppressed individuals. There are no knives in the kitchens of this city (Bompiani, pp. 288, euro 18), tells through the life events of a family in Aleppo the genesis and consolidation of the Assad regime that dominates Syria since the Sixties, describing the internal repression and annihilation, which invites us to reflect on all forms of contemporary despotism.