The Syrian writer and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa, author of several novels which placed him among the most recognized contemporary authors of his country, died Saturday evening in Damascus of a heart attack at the age of 59, we learned from from a source close to his family.

A well-known critic of the authorities, this novelist born in Aleppo remained in his country despite the repression and the war started in 2011. “I stay because it is my country. I was born there, I live there, I want to die there!”, he said in an interview in 2019.

He is notably distinguished by his third novel In Praise of Hate, nominated in 2008 for the International Arab Novel Prize and in 2013 for the Prize for Independent Foreign Fiction and translated into several languages. He tells the story of how a young Syrian from Aleppo, raised in the purest Muslim tradition, believes she will find her freedom by joining a fundamentalist movement which introduces her to jihadist struggles.

In 2013 he won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Prize awarded by the American University in Cairo and was nominated in 2014 for the International Arab Novel Prize for his fourth novel No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, which was also published in d other languages ​​and which tells the story of recent decades through that of a family from the Aleppo bourgeoisie.

In 2016, he published Death is a Chore, a dark account of the Syrian tragedy, the English edition of which was a finalist in the United States for the 2019 National Book Award in the translated literature category. His other works include “No One Prayed for Them” (2019), The Keeper of the Lure (1993) and The Bohemian’s Notebooks (2000). Khaled Khalifa is also the author of television series which had great success in the early 1990s.

His death was greeted by artists, intellectuals and journalists on social networks, as well as political activists in Syria and abroad. “The strong emotion which overwhelmed social networks upon the announcement of this atrocious news is commensurate not only with his great talent as a writer but also with the deep sympathy aroused by his warm personality, overflowing with love of life », writes Farouk Mardam Bey, the French editor of three of his novels at Actes Sud.