Rich and descriptive. The readers get to know the characters and their plights, not just geopolitically, but emotionally as well.

Khaled Khalifa's "No One Prayed Over Their Graves" is a sweeping, multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of two friends, Hanna Gregoros and Zakariya Bayazidi, as they navigate the tumultuous history of Syria from the late Ottoman Empire to the present day. Set against the backdrop of Aleppo, a vibrant city grappling with modernization, political upheavals, and religious tensions, the novel delves into themes of friendship, love, loss, and the enduring power of storytelling.

Khalifa's prose is both lyrical and evocative, bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of Aleppo in all its richness and complexity. He weaves in elements of magical realism, adding a touch of enchantment to the narrative and highlighting the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

The novel's strength lies in its intricate character development. Hanna and Zakariya, despite their contrasting personalities, share an unbreakable bond that transcends religious and social divides. Their friendship serves as an anchor amidst the chaos and uncertainty that surround them.

Khalifa's exploration of Syrian history is both poignant and insightful. He captures the hopes and aspirations of the early 20th century, the disillusionment following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the struggles of a nation caught in the crossfire of political ideologies and conflicts.

"No One Prayed Over Their Graves" is a powerful and moving testament to the enduring spirit of Syria and its people. It is a novel that lingers long after the final page is turned, prompting reflection on the complexities of history, the power of friendship, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Khalid’s novel is painfully stirring and prompts sombre introspection. The psychological impacts of war, unrestrained nationalism, and unfettered conflict are indelible. But where there is animosity, there is also love and warm fellowship.

We see that this paradox wreaks havoc on the psyche of the characters. Khalid’s language masterfully renders this distress wrought on the mind and society.

While the saga is imperfect in many ways, it is also richly imbued with astute revelations on mankind and Syrian identity. This epic tale will henceforth leave the reader in quiet contemplation, wonder, and even indignation.

I feel grateful to live in such a time where a writer like Khalifia is writing such rich stories about the cities and countries which are undergoing so much violence and trauma currently.

If you like historical fiction that is deeply rooted in place and characters, then this book is for you. It is fully immersive and paints a picture of this land where people of different faiths live in harmony through different Empirical occupations.

I appreciate Khalifia's storytelling and am grateful for the gift of these characters. They'll remain with me for quite some time.

An epic and complicated read, this is the story of a family across generations, anchored on Zakariya, his adopted brother Hanna, and their sister, Souad, in the Syria of the early 1900s to 1950s. It starts with a terrible flood that washes most of a village away, altering the lives of the survivors. Through a complicated timeline, we are immersed into the lives of the three, and those connected to them, as well as the life of Aleppo and nearby villages, the region, and Europe.

With a fascinating cast of characters, the novel is about the vagaries of life, love and loss. Zakariya and Hanna are closer than brothers, with their connection stretching back into the past before them, through their grandfathers, and then into the future through their children, and into old age. They grow up together in the back alleys of Aleppo, prosper together as land owners, and then fail together. Souad is the third in their deep connection, and although initially her role is not completely clear, by the end we see her important to Hanna’s story.

It was a delight to be immersed into the rhythms of Khaled Khalifa’s writing, and a time that’s now past. I didn’t know much about the history of Syria, and this historical novel painted a vivid image for me of that time and place. It’s also the first novel I’ve read that’s set in the Middle East/West Asia that’s from the point of view of characters belonging to the three major religions: Jews, Christians and Muslims live and love together, connected by far more than simply the ways they worship. Khalifa depicts this beautifully. I also learnt about the impact of the Ottoman Empire on that region, about the famine there, Turkish and French occupation, the Armenian massacre, and other events of the time.

Read this exceptional novel if you enjoy historical fiction, and also for the evocative writing. These characters will stay with me for a while.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC.

I did not enjoy this book; reading it was a tedious struggle.

The story begins in 1907. Two young men, Hanna Gregoros and Zakariya Bayazidi, return to their village near Aleppo, Syria, to discover that a flood has left virtually all buildings destroyed and nearly everyone dead. Flashbacks then reveal the lives of Hanna, a Syrian Christian, and Zakariya, an Arab Muslim, before the flood. The two used their wealth to build a citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasures, especially drinking, gambling, and sex. After the flood, Hanna devotes himself to a life of asceticism, becoming obsessed with death and the meaning of life. Zakariya is less willing to repent and give up his libertine lifestyle, but he never abandons his friend.

Though the focus is on these two lifelong friends, the lives of other characters (like Zakariya’s sister, a Jewish friend, and two grandchildren) are also detailed. There are so many characters that it is sometimes difficult to remember who is who. To add to the confusion, there are two characters named William and two named Aisha. And then there’s Maryam and Mariana, both of whom have lost families in tragic circumstances. A family tree would have been very helpful. In the Acknowledgments, the author mentions a friend who “drew up an index of the characters and mapped out the relationships between them.” This index and map would be helpful to the reader.

Because of the number of characters, it is difficult to connect with them. Sometimes characters are mentioned, but there is no explanation as to who they are until pages later. This is the case with Sherko. Sometimes it is difficult to know if a character is important: a lot of information is given about someone, only to have that person never appear again. For instance, do we need to be given so much information about Zakariya’s tailor Monsieur George?

The book can only be described as dense with lengthy paragraphs of exposition, little dialogue, and unnecessary details and tangents. At times the reader may feel buried in details. In an interview featured in The Guardian, Khalifa stated, “It is a novel about lost love, death, contemplation and nature in our lives, about the making of saints, about epidemics, about disasters, about a people’s attempt and struggle to be part of global culture, about the struggle between liberals and conservatives, about the eternal coexistence of this city [Aleppo], about the city at a time when the whole world was seeking to move to a new stage” (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/01/khaled-khalifa-all-the-places-of-my-childhood-are-destroyed-no-one-prayed-over-their-graves-novel). Perhaps the problem is that he tried to include too much.

The writing style did not appeal to me. There is constant shifting of timelines from past to ongoing present and between characters – usually with little indication of a shift. Transitions are often missing: “[Shaha] lost weight, and her face grew pale as an old owl’s. Zakariya wasn’t able to extricate his remaining family and friends all from the disaster; they had all shattered. He asked Hanna to pick himself off the floor and go back to his life that was waiting for him. Hanna listened, then asked Zakariya to leave him alone and take care of Shams Al-Sabah who had left that morning.” The connection between ideas is difficult to ascertain.

There are parts that are contradictory or make little sense. For instance, Hanna is told that Mariana “’wasn’t some naïve girl’” yet a couple of pages later the same person tells Hanna that “’she was in some respects still that same naïve girl.’” How can Hanna who is not a priest “give mass”? Some sentences are just bizarre: “Mariana saw Hanna dangling adoringly from Aisha’s eyelashes”?! Zakariya is described as having “Pieces of his body . . . falling off” and Hanna sees “pieces of my body fall off”? A woman has one child but she “surrounded herself and her children with amulets”? A woman spends the night with Hanna and then “got up, washed, changed the bedsheet, and lay down next to Hanna once more as dawn slipped thought the window.” She changes the bedsheet with him in it? A servant can read a name on an envelope and write an address as well, but then asks a man to teach him to read and write?

Perhaps translation is the issue. There are anachronisms like “flash in the pan” and grammatical errors like “I saw furniture that had once been in my house wandering the city.” Words are repeated. Prodigious, for instance is used five times: “prodigious capacity for learning” and “prodigious power” and “prodigious crowd” and “prodigious affection” and “prodigious memory.”

The author writes of his “initial chaotic drafts” but, with all due respect, I’d argue that this final draft is still chaotic. It lacks cohesion and just goes on and on. I can understand why the author, in the interest of fairness, shows each of three religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) as having female fundamentalists, but is it necessary to have three impossible love stories? Others may have a different reaction when reading this book, but I just wanted it to end.

This tale of friends Hanna and Zakariya- a Muslim and a Christian- moves back and forth in time around a fictional flood in 1907 that destroys so much that is important to them. This is a dense and at times more than a little challenging novel that, frankly, I DNF. I fully appreciate lyrical and poetic language but this was just too much for me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'm certain others will enjoy this.

“In three nights he lost everything: his house, his lands, his village, his wife.”

No One Prayed Over Their Graves is a winding story of Hanna and Zakariya, two old friends. Their lives are forever changed when a flood sweeps through their village while they’re out of town and leaves nothing but death and devastation in its wake.

This literary fiction was intriguing, but I really needed more plot. I read a lot of literary fiction, but I can still find larger plot components that keep me intrigued. This was largely a character study and a reflection on death and greed. The constant shifting of timelines with no narration of the shift had me confused.

No One Prayed Over Their Graves was an it’s not you it’s me book and, as such, this review is probably going to be very short. I don’t have a whole lot to say. My main issue (if you can call it that?) was with the writing, and it’s hard to tell if that was an authorial choice or a translator’s choice. The story is a bit like a family saga, although its focus for the most part is on Hanna — later to become the patriarch and actually not related to any one of the characters who also get POVs. So maybe the family part of “family saga” isn’t quite accurate, but still. They are a kind of family. Anyway, the precipitating event is a flood, which kills almost everyone in a village in Syria. From here, we flip back and forth between past and ongoing present. It’s an interesting enough story, and really I think, as I said, my main problem was not getting along with the writing style. It just felt a little dry and, on occasion, removed from everything. That’s not to say, though, that this book wouldn’t suit other people. I’m sure it will. It just didn’t suit me, sadly.

There was a lot to unpack in this story. It took me a bit to get into it and be able to understand everything that was going on. It was hard for me to follow along because of how complex the characters and story line were.

No One Prayed Over Their Graves – Khaled Khalifa (translated from Arabic by Leri Price)

“…the land where your loved ones are buried will haunt you – it’s not so easy to leave it behind. Zakariya had always felt that anyone who wished to get away from their family should take their graves with them when they left.”

Slowly working my way through my @netgalley ARCs – this one comes courtesy of @fsgbooks, and is another one for #arablitapril, this time from Syria.

A hard book to review, there’s a lot going on here – time shifts, many characters, reflections on love, faith, history, and more. It was a lot to take in, and I felt overwhelmed for reasons I’ll go into.

The central event of the book is a fictional flood in 1907, the Euphrates breaking its banks and washing away the village of Hosh Hanna. There are few survivors, and the main protagonists of this part of the novel escaped only through their absence: Hanna and Zakariya, one a Syrian Christian, the other an Arab Muslim. Both lose their families to the flood, and both react in profoundly different ways.

We are sent back to 1881 when the two met as children, introducing us to more characters; Souad, Zakariya’s sister; Aza, a Jewish boy; and William Issa, Aza’s Jewish companions. From here, the author shows an intricately woven plot of a multi-faith community with tensions covering the political, the religious and the romantic, all the way up to 1951. A lot happens, and I honestly found it quite a chore to get through.

This book is very much marketed as a love letter to Aleppo, a city whose name now carries deeply different connotations in the world, and I have to say that the detail here is fantastic, but that doesn’t always translate across to the characters. The density made it difficult to care about the characters even in moments of obvious tragedy and joy. I felt buried in detail and place, and it left me unable to enjoy the story and themes.

I think people here will really like this book, but it wasn’t for me. If you want richly detailed historical fiction, however, this one is out 18th July. And it counts towards @thestorygraph’s Read the World challenge, so consider that!