Research Catalog

Death is hard work

Title
Death is hard work / Khaled Khalifa ; translated from the Arabic by Leri Price.
Author
  • خليفة: خالد: 1964-2023.
  • Khalīfah, Khālid, 1964-2023
Publication
  • New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
  • ©2019

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
Book/TextUse in library JFD 19-2956Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Additional Authors
Price, Leri
Description
180 pages; 22 cm
Summary
  • A dogged, absurd quest through the nightmare of the Syrian civil war, Khaled Khalifa's 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.
  • 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, he persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is only a two-hour drive from Damascus. There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone. Honoring their father's request quickly balloons into an epic and life-threatening quest. -- adapted from jacket
Uniform Title
  • موت عمل شاق. English
  • Mawt ʻamal shāqq. English
Alternative Title
  • موت عمل شاق.
  • Mawt ʻamal shāqq.
Subject
  • Civil War (Syria : 2011-)
  • 2011
  • Families > Syria > Fiction
  • Families
  • FICTION / Family Life
  • FICTION / Literary
  • FICTION / War & Military
  • Syria > History > Civil War, 2011- > Fiction
  • Syria
Genre/Form
  • Fiction.
  • History.
Note
  • "Originally published in Arabic in 2016 by Nawfal, an imprint of Hachette-Antoine, Lebanon, as Al-Mawt aamalon chaq (الموت عمل شاق)--Title page verso.
Language (note)
  • Translated from the Arabic.
Contents
If you were a sack of cumin -- A bouquet floating down a river -- Bolbol flying in a confined space.
Call Number
JFD 19-2956
ISBN
  • 9780374135737
  • 0374135738
LCCN
  • 2018033289
  • 40028910113
OCLC
1036202550
Author
Khalīfah, Khālid, 1964-2023, author.
Alternate Script for Author
خليفة: خالد: 1964-2023.
Alternate Script for Uniform Title
موت عمل شاق. English
Title
Death is hard work / Khaled Khalifa ; translated from the Arabic by Leri Price.
Publisher
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
Copyright Date
©2019
Edition
First American edition.
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Language
Translated from the Arabic.
Chronological Term
2011
Added Author
Price, Leri, translator.
Other Standard Identifier
40028910113
Research Call Number
JFD 19-2956
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