Death Is Hard Work

A Novel

By: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price - translator

Narrated by: Neil Shah

Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination.

Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is - after all - only a two-hour drive from Damascus.

There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone.

With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings' decision to set aside their differences and honor their father's request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way - as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed - will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them.

©2016 Hachette-Antoine; Translation copyright 2019 by Leri Price (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Today's Hell for Those Paying Attention

A searing portrait of the contemporary Middle East in a state of civil war. Reading like autobiography, it clearly derives from personal experience and first hand accounts told to the award winning author who to this day chooses to remain in the war zone that is Syria.

While Khalifa's writing has received attention in the west, I find that attention is less than what is deserved. Why is the praise followed with qualifications, implying this scholar is at closer examination rather a backwater crank, a primative. Rather a condescending "Pity he isn't developing his talents more fully somewhere, say at Oxford" instead on focusing on distant horrors!

To me, this, the first work of his I've read, makes him an Arab Elie Wiesel, that other teller of backwater horrors, in his case Romania. And I'm snapping up his other works available on Audible.

This book is a must to read

there is nothing to like or dislike in this book that details the everyday life of a family in Syria under a crual inhumane regime but also trying to cope with some traditions such as the sister who has to marry a man she doesn't love and make it known to all ... So well detailed that you can actually visualize the events, the transition of the characters throughout the journey....I will read the other by this author and wish he had still been alive to comment on Syria now🙏

A gem

Lost for words at the end of this journey.. a book that is screening to be made into a movie. Death is hard work.

The bleakness of living in a war-torn country!

We are used to Syria being an item in the news, and roll our eyes at the intractability if the Middle East. This is a story from the shattered inside of that unfortunate country, written by a master storyteller and well narrated by Neil Shah. Hard to listen to at times - I had to take a break from time to time- but well worth your time.

Oooph! Heartbreaking Book.

Beautifully written. My basic feelings of hopefulness put to the test at every turn. Was the trip Anabiya a metaphor for the war?

I want to read more from Khalifa.

Short story strong massage

The book captures the futility of trying to restore what has been lost, the decay of national identity, the burden of history, and the deep divisions that prevent reconciliation. Khalifa leaves readers with a haunting image of a people condemned to carry the weight of their past, even as they struggle to envision a future. It is a poignant and devastating commentary on the human cost of war and the enduring scars it leaves behind.