No Knives in the Kitchens of This City

A Novel

By: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price - translator

Narrated by: Stephen Lee

In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times).

Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. She and her siblings and mother are slowly choked in violence and decay, as their lives are plundered by a brutal regime.

Set between the 1960s and 2000s, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City unravels the systems of fear and control under Assad. With eloquence and startling honesty, it speaks of the persecution of a whole society.

©2016 Khaled Khalifa (P)2016 Hoopoe

Critic reviews

"Khaled Khalifa writes about his native city with sensuality and an almost feral intensity..... No Knives in the Kitchens of This City offers a glimpse into how terrified and empty of hope the people of a city must be to rise up in revolt. The future offers them nothing. It is a castle of closed doors.... The sights, smells and horror of living in Aleppo come pounding to life in this book. The place, to me, is no longer an abstraction, and Mr. Khalifa clearly fears for its fate throughout." (The New York Times)

"[Khalifa] surprises and shocks." (Charles Glass, The New York Review of Books)

"Critically acclaimed...[No Knives in the Kitchens of this City] traces the degrading and destructive impact of Syria's dictatorship on the lives of a family from Aleppo." (Financial Times)