Acclaimed writer Khaled Khalifa dies aged 59

Khaled Khalifa (image: Johannes Stein/dpa)

Award-winning author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa has died at his home in Damascus. Although one of his country's most celebrated writers, his novels were banned in Syria

Syrian writer and veteran government critic Khaled Khalifa has died of cardiac arrest at the age of 59 at his home in Damascus.

Khalifa, who hailed from Maryamin in north-western Aleppo province, was celebrated for his novels, television screenplays and newspaper columns, and honoured with several of the Arab world's top literary awards.

Khalifa gained fame as a writer of several popular Syrian TV series in the early 1990s.

He was known as a staunch opponent of the ruling Baath party and his columns criticising the authorities. But despite his well-known stance, he chose to remain in the country after the 2011 civil war broke out with the repression of protests against the government. "I am staying because this is my country," he said in a 2019 interview. "I was born here, I live here and I want to die here!"

Today, five works by Khaled Khalifa, in English translation:https://t.co/jv2z73iElE

— ArabLit (also @arablit.bsky.social) (@arablit) October 3, 2023

His 2006 novel In Praise of Hatred was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arab Fiction – often dubbed the Arab Booker prize – and was translated into six languages. The novel recounts the story of a young Syrian woman from Aleppo who escapes her sequestered life by joining a jihadist organisation.

In 2013, his novel No Knives in the Kitchens of this City won the Naguib Mahfouz literature prize, Egypt's top accolade for writers. It focuses on the lives of Syrians under the rule of the Baath party headed by President Bashar al-Assad.

The writer's death sparked a wave of condolences on social media from fellow writers and members of Syria's exiled opposition. "Goodbye, you kind man," wrote Syrian writer and academic Salam Kawakibi.