Book Review: A Syrian family stands tall as Aleppo falls

‘No Knives in the Kitchens of This City’ by Khaled Khalifa tells the story of a Syrian family living through tragedy.
Updated 03 August 2017
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Book Review: A Syrian family stands tall as Aleppo falls

“No Knives in the Kitchens of This City” by Khaled Khalifa is a heartbreaking story of a Syrian family navigating Aleppo as politics, the president and loyalties ravage the city. Khalifa, who was born in Aleppo, is the author of four novels and the editor of the literary magazine Alif. He does not hold back in his descriptions of how Aleppo, from the 1960s to the 2000s, has fallen around families who have no choice but to live through the disasters. Translated into English by Leri Price in 2016, the novel won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2013 and was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014.
Khalifa’s story is told and retold by his characters who long for the past when life was not as difficult. Following one family, the novel reveals the story of a mother who died “ten years too late,” according to her son. Her family must find their way through the streets of Aleppo amid its dwindling lettuce fields, overcrowded streets and loyal party members looking for allegiances and punishing those who do not praise the leader as they do.
Not a loyalist and marred by misfortune, the mother must make do with her life, even if her son’s birthday is marked by the Ba’athist coup of 1963, an event in history she despises which makes her feel as if “her life was a collection of mistakes that could never be resolved.” Her life deteriorates slowly after she, a dreamy woman with dark eyes, marries for love and eventually is left by her husband for another woman. She is abandoned by her own family, except for her brother known as Uncle Nazir, and forced to continue life as a school teacher with three children and her shame. But as her own life takes a turn down a twisted and unplanned path, so does Syria’s and its beloved city of Aleppo.
The regime’s takeover is swift — it forcefully grasps the country and its people. Neither their lives nor their surroundings are in their hands anymore.
From the narrator’s grandfather Jalal Al-Nabulsi, who is “proud of being from a family which had been in Aleppo for a thousand years,” one of the first employees of the Railway Institute and one of the only witnesses to the inception of the Syrian railway system, to a mother who “perpetually extolled the past and conjured it up with delight as a kind of revenge for her humble life,” to Sawsan who at first is irrepressible and then “immersed herself into radicalism and fatwas day after day,” Khalifa’s book weaves through the generations of the family.
His book depicts a fading picture, one that was once vibrant and full of life. He moves from Aleppo to Midan Akbas and back, through dusty roads and the Cinema Opera where childhoods were filled with Egyptian and Bollywood movies “with happy endings.” He tells the stories of women who leaf through trinkets and forgotten wares in the Bab Al-Nasr second-hand shop and bring them back to life to feel a semblance of magic. As “walking in the streets had become a terrifying experience” and violence and temperamental political attitudes take hold, his sentences and metaphors captivate the reader and will immerse you in Syria.
Time and age weigh heavily on the pages as a collapsing life and city add to the darkness that begins to take hold of Aleppo. Tales of love and dreams, of faded images that serve as motivation to move forward, are rampant. Mother manages to move on when she believes she is “divorced, not abandoned,” but for others, it is a little more difficult to convince themselves and find inspiration to move forward.
Khalifa’s book is reminiscent of Turkish novelist Sabahattin Ali’s style in the manner in which he hints that it is life that shapes people and not people who shape life. Like Ali, Khalifa’s story is about how circumstance decides the path one’s life will take. His love for the city and for Syria is ever-present in his every description and metaphor. He can enchant the reader with details of the city and its history, its buildings and the “rising fumes of death and the fear present in every street and on the face of every man and woman hurrying home in the early evening.”
But amid the fear are pockets of people who cling to music and passionate love, who attempt to keep hate away and defy the powers that be. Within the dark alleyways and molding walls, art, poetry and theater flourish. Sometimes, the characters live in their own momentary bubbles and are blind to the outside world in their pursuit of self-discovery and purpose. But ultimately, they are forced back to face the world and themselves.
In the darkness are bouts of light, but it is neither bright nor long-lasting and that is the truth and reality of Syria. Despite this, the resilience of Khalifa’s characters in their journeys is hopeful. This book paints horrifying pictures as beautifully as it does optimistic ones. Khalifa’s writing is whole, his sentences memorable, his characters strong and fearless. His strength lies in his ability to reveal harsh truths and ugly realities beautifully, to bring through the seas of hate, love and resilience.
In the end, when life hangs on by a thread, there is hope amid the pessimism as “Aleppo still embodied a dream of wealth and urbanity even though three-fourths of it had turned into slums unfit for human habitation.”


What We Are Reading Today: Myanmar’s Enemy Within by Francis Wade

Updated 01 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Myanmar’s Enemy Within by Francis Wade

In 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world.

In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected voices for democracy have turned on the minorities at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.


What We Are Reading Today: The Fetters of Rhyme

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Updated 31 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Fetters of Rhyme

  • “The Fetters of Rhyme” traces this dynamic history of rhyme from the 1590s through the 1670s

Author: Rebecca M. Rush

In his 1668 preface to Paradise Lost, John Milton rejected the use of rhyme, portraying himself as a revolutionary freeing English verse from “the troublesome and modern bondage of Riming.” 

Milton, however, was not initiating a new line of thought — English poets had been debating about rhyme and its connections to liberty, freedom, and constraint since Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

“The Fetters of Rhyme” traces this dynamic history of rhyme from the 1590s through the 1670s. Rebecca Rush uncovers the associations early modern readers attached to rhyming forms.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Desert Edens

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Updated 30 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Desert Edens

  • Lehmann examines some of the most ambitious climate-engineering projects to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Author: Philipp Lehmann

From the 1870s to the mid-20th century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and planners were avidly interested in large-scale projects that might actively alter the climate. Uncovering this history, “Desert Edens” looks at how arid environments and an increasing anxiety about climate in the colonial world shaped this upsurge in ideas about climate engineering.

From notions about the transformation of deserts into forests to Nazi plans to influence the climates of war-torn areas, Philipp Lehmann puts the early climate change debate in its environmental, intellectual, and political context, and considers the ways this legacy reverberates in the present climate crisis.

Lehmann examines some of the most ambitious climate-engineering projects to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Confronted with the Sahara in the 1870s, the French developed concepts for a flooding project that would lead to the creation of a man-made Sahara Sea.

 

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Becoming Earth’

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Updated 30 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Becoming Earth’

  • Surprisingly, as Jabr discusses the disadvantages of human activity leading to environmental crises, he also highlights the importance of humans in improving ecosystems

Author: Ferris Jabr

Published in 2024 and written by Ferris Jabr, “Becoming Earth” talks about how the planet we know and live in started and came to life.

One of the significant thoughts Jabr argues through his book is the idea that billions of years ago, life transformed from a collection of orbiting rocks into what we now know as our cosmic oasis. This process released oxygen into the atmosphere, formed seas and oceans, and shaped rocks into fertile soil.

Through the book, the author also discusses various environmental systems and how they operate. He talks about the roles of microbes in shaping continents, the Amazon rainforest’s self-sustaining rain cycle and the impact of human activities on planetary systems, all connected to other natural events.

Surprisingly, as Jabr discusses the disadvantages of human activity leading to environmental crises, he also highlights the importance of humans in improving ecosystems. Despite the negative impacts people have had on the environment, humanity has expended a great deal of energy to understand and mitigate environmental problems, he argues.

However, the book has received some criticism, with reviewers arguing that Jabr may have conflated his personal perspective on Earth with scientific research and evidence in the process of using metaphors to explain science.

Other reviewers said that a few sections of “Becoming Earth” may need improvement and more in-depth scientific evidence to support the conclusions Jabr makes.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Red Bandit by Mike Guardia

Updated 29 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Red Bandit by Mike Guardia

Mike Guardia's "Red Bandit" pulls you into the cockpit of this legendary jet, delivering a visceral, no-holds-barred chronicle of its battlefield legacy, stripping away the myths to reveal the true capabilities — and limits — of Russia’s iconic warbird.

Based on declassified reports, first-hand pilot accounts, and meticulous combat analysis, Red Bandit is more than just a parochial history — it’s a high-stakes, sky-scorching narrative of power, politics, and heart-pounding dogfights.