Death Is Hard Work

National Book Award Finalist: “The poetic and horrific combine in this tale of love and death set in a Syria torn apart by civil war” (Guardian, UK).

As elderly Abdel Latif dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus, he relays his final wish to his youngest son Bolbol: to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, he persuad...