The author of this extraordinary book recently abandoned a newly begun Harvard fellowship to return to his old life in Damascus.

Death is Hard Work
KHALED KHALIFA
(Translated by Leri Price; narrated by Neil Shah)
(AUDIBLE, £14.08)

The author of this extraordinary book recently abandoned a newly begun Harvard fellowship to return to his old life in Damascus. Most who can have abandoned the city. After listening to his novel I am less astonished by Khalifa’s decision. His protagonists behave with a stubbornness that seems almost senseless to outsiders; it is what they have left when everything else is gone.

The novel takes the form of a road trip. An elderly teacher, Abdel Latif, dies in a Damascus hospital, asking his youngest son, Bolbol, to bury him in his family’s ancestral village near Aleppo. The journey is only 370 km (230 miles) but involves crossing numerous checkpoints manned by contesting armies. Setting off with the corpse in his older brother Hussein’s minibus, Bolbol and his siblings are repeatedly questioned, detained, freed, ­recaptured.

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