Khaled Khalifa
(1966, Syria) is a script writer and a novelist. His latest novel, In Praise of Hatred (2006), which appeared in Lebanon, is banned in Syria. It is about a black page in Syrian history: the unprecedented aggresssive retaliation by the Syrian government against islamists in Homs and Hama, in the 1980s. Reuters and Human Right Watch have taken action in the meantime. Khalifa is working on his fourth novel, A Parallel Life. His first, The Guard of Deception (1993) appeared in 2000 as the The Gypsy Notebooks, banned in Syria for four years. Khalifa works with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State. In 2007 he received a medal from the Ismaiiliyah International Festival for Documentaries and in 2005 a prize for the best script at het Valencia Film Festival.
Past events
Forbidden words
Khaled Khalifa talks to Lieve Joris about being a writer, censorship and freedom of expression and religion godsdienst in secular Syria and the Arab world. Interviews by Geert Linnebank. In English.
Documentary: Black Stone, with an introduction by the author Khaled Khalifa
Syrian documentary by Nidal Al-Dabas on the hard life of children in a poor part of the city of Damascus. With an introduction by the writer Khaled Khalifa, who wrote the scenario. In English.
