We are very pleased to announce that the Banipal Book Club is back! Due to the Arab British Centre being closed at the moment, we have decided to run the Book Club as normal but will be hosting it online!

Join us on Thursday 2^nd April at 6:30-8 pm, from the comfort of your home via your phone or laptop. We will be discussing Death is Hard Work by Syrian author Khaled Khalifa, translated by Leri Price.

Death is Hard Work is the third of Khalifa’s novels to be translated by Leri Price, who recently won the 2019 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her translation of Death is Hard Work.

The novel follows the efforts of three siblings to take their father’s body back to his hometown for burial, through the chaos of Syria’s civil war. Interwoven into their hellish and sometimes absurd road trip are fragments of the characters’ past lives.

You can read an extract from Death is Hard Work in Banipal 57, Syria in the Heart, and a review of the novel in Banipal 65. In her review, Stephanie Petit says:

“its devastating portrayal of the present Syrian war, composed entirely without sentiment or overt moralising [delivers] an impact that lingers”

You can download the book on Kindle here.

Read more about the novel here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/10/death-is-hard-work-by-khaled-khalifa-review

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/books/review/khaled-khalifa-death-is-hard-work.html

https://www.ft.com/content/f526e5aa-70ac-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5

The Book Club meetings are free but please RSVP, either by email to bookclub@banipal.co.uk or via the Facebook page.

Don’t forget to follow the Banipal Book Club page on Facebook for all the latest on the Book Club and the BALMAL library: https://www.facebook.com/BanipalBookClub/