No Knives in the Kitchens of This City
novel by Khaled Khalifa
No Knives in the Kitchens of This City (Arabic: لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة, romanized: La sakakin fi matabikh hadhihi al-madina) is a novel by the Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa. The novel was first published in 2013 by Al Ain publishing house in Cairo. The novel was awarded the "Najib Mahfouz Prize for Literature" in 2013, it was included in "Alqaseerah" final list of the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, known as the "Arab Booker Prize".
About the novel
The title of the novel describes the fear and fragmentation during the half-century that the Arab world has lived. It is a novel about a society that lived with oppression and desires.
Through the biography of a family, they discovered that all their dreams died and turned into ashes, just as the mother's body turned into junk that must be disposed of so that others can continue to live. It is a novel that raises and asks basic questions and tries to reveal the facts of the devastation of Arab life under authoritarian regimes that have insulted and destroyed the lives and dreams of Arab citizens.
Here, Khaled Khalifa writes about everything that is kept secret in Arab life in general and Syrian life in particular. It is a novel about grief, fear, and human death.
The public source identifies “No Knives in the Kitchens of This City” as novel by Khaled Khalifa. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Knives, Kitchens and City.
Why this record matters
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 18, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q22930919. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “No Knives in the Kitchens of This City” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.