Death Is Hard Work: A Novel

"The darkest of humor punctuates deep storytelling in Khaled Khalifa’s novel, in which three siblings in Syria must find a way to honor their father’s desire to be buried in his family plot. The problem is that he died in Damascus and the plot is in Anabiya, a few hours away. Khalifa’s essential novel is a Faulkneresque odyssey that traverses not just regime- and rebel-held territory, but life after death as Syria’s civil war rages on."