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From author Khaled Khalifa, the story of two friends whose lives are altered by a 1907 flood that devastates their Syrian village.
On a terrible December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.
Hanna was once a wealthy libertine landowner who had built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. But with the loss of his home, wife, and community, he transforms, becoming an ascetic mystic obsessed with investigating the meaning of life. In “No One Prayed Over Their Graves”, we follow Hanna's life before and after the flood, tracing friendships, love and lusts, family and business, until he is just one thread in the rich tapestry of Aleppo.
Khaled Khalifa weaves a sweeping tale of life and death in the hubbub of Aleppine society at the turn of the twentieth century. “No One Prayed Over Their Graves” is a portrait of a people on the verge of great change: from the provincial village to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews live and work together, united in their love for Aleppo and their dreams for the future.
On a terrible December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.
Hanna was once a wealthy libertine landowner who had built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. But with the loss of his home, wife, and community, he transforms, becoming an ascetic mystic obsessed with investigating the meaning of life. In “No One Prayed Over Their Graves”, we follow Hanna's life before and after the flood, tracing friendships, love and lusts, family and business, until he is just one thread in the rich tapestry of Aleppo.
Khaled Khalifa weaves a sweeping tale of life and death in the hubbub of Aleppine society at the turn of the twentieth century. “No One Prayed Over Their Graves” is a portrait of a people on the verge of great change: from the provincial village to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews live and work together, united in their love for Aleppo and their dreams for the future.
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Reviews
"A gorgeous new novel from Khaled Khalifa, one of Syria's most celebrated novelists . . . Lush, elegiac . . . Márquezian . . . A novel of abundance and generosity . . . At stake is the act of storytelling itself: gossip, religious narrative, war photography, any narrative in which bigotry can reside . . . The pain of witness surfaces across the story."
Sarah Cypher, The Washington Post