Khaled Khalifa’s new novel tells the story of two families in Aleppo

Khaled Khalifa, a Syrian writer, lives in Damascus even though state authorities have banned his books and, on one occasion, beaten him up. His previous novel, “Death Is Hard Work”, dealt with the carnage of his country’s civil war, which began in 2011. “No One Prayed Over Their Graves”, a family saga, takes place in and around Aleppo, a historic city ruined by that conflict. The novel, which covers the period between 1881 and 1951, tells the multigenerational story of two Aleppo families “intricately entwined” despite differences of creed, class and character.