Khaled Khalifa was born into a family of olive farmers in Urum al Sughra in the Aleppo countryside in Northwest Syria in 1964. The fifth child in a family that eventually included 13, he graduated from the Law School, Aleppo University, in 1988 but is best known as a novelist, screenwriter, and poet. Khalifa wrote his first poem at the age of 15 but destroyed it shortly after, believing it reflected the writing of other poets as he had not yet discovered his own unique style of writing.
Khalifa was a member of Aleppo University’s literary forum but gave up writing poetry shortly after graduating. He began his career as a screenwriter after serving his compulsory two years of military service and quickly gained notoriety in Syrian cultural circles after writing several popular Syrian TV series in the early 1990s.
His career as a novelist also began around that time with the publication of his first novel, The Guard of Deception in 1993, followed by The Gypsies’ Notebooks in 2000. He simultaneously received much acclaim as a screenwriter in the Middle East for a string of popular Syrian television series such as Rainbow, The Godfather, Relative Calm, The Shadow of a Woman, and the extremely popular Saga of the Al-Jalali Family which embodied the social and cultural details of Aleppo.
Khalifa’s third novel, published in English as In Praise of Hatred after being translated from Arabic by Leri Price in 2013, was originally published in Lebanon in 2006. Like his other novels, In Praise of Hatred is a work of historical fiction; this particular story is told from the perspective of an unnamed young woman living in Aleppo and revolves around actual events in Syria in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although no specific identifiers are used, one only needs to have a basic knowledge of the last 50 years of Syrian history to know which entities Khalifa is referring to. Along with the English version, In Praise of Hatred has been translated into eight languages including Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Danish.
Khalifa reached the pinnacle of his career as a novelist when he won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his fourth novel, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, which was published in Egypt in 2013 and also translated into English by Leri Price. The novel focuses on the death of a mother in a family whose way of life has been devastated due to living in a society whose hopes and dreams have been insulted and destroyed by the ruling authoritarian regime. No Knives in the Kitchens of This City was eventually translated into six languages and was included in the final list for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014.
Khalifa’s other novels include Death Is Hard Work published in 2016, No One Prayed Over Their Graves published in 2019, An Eagle at the Next Table published in 2022, and Dead Fish Breathing Lemon Peels, his final novel which is being published posthumously on September 30, 2024, to coincide with the first anniversary of his death in Damascus in 2023. Only 264 pages long, Dead Fish Breathing Lemon Peels follows the same genre as his previous novels, this time lamenting the decline of the coastal city of Latakia as a fictitious group of young musicians, poets, and a dancer, futilely attempt to breathe life back into a decaying city that has been distorted by decades of administrative corruption and shady deals by contractors.
As an individual, Khaled Khalifa was larger than life. He embraced everything it brought his way with a childlike enthusiasm and thoroughly enjoyed the recognition his work had achieved for him wherever he went. Khalifa’s robust character and generosity made him a favorite among Syrian celebrities. Despite the national stature he had achieved in Syria, Khalifa consistently stood for freedom, and against dictatorship, in his writing and personal life and remained true to his principles until his death at the age of 59.
Despite the deep sorrow he experienced after the destruction of Aleppo and the displacement of its residents, Khalifa continued to spread joy wherever he went, consistently keeping the flame of hope alive within him that conditions in his homeland would eventually change for the better and sharing that hope with everyone he met.
During his life, Khaled Khalifa touched the hearts of many and his name will remain etched in the collective memory of Syrians, as well as non-Syrians, for his consistent opposition to the authorities and his criticism of their policies in his articles and media interviews, as well as his abundant creativity when telling Syrian stories and his kind and loving heart.
