No One Prayed Over Their Graves

A Novel

De: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price - translator

Narrado por: Neil Shah

On a December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.

Hanna was once a wealthy libertine, a landowner who built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. But with the loss of his home, wife, and community, he transforms, becoming an ascetic mystic obsessed with death and the meaning of life. In No One Prayed Over Their Graves, we follow Hanna's life before and after the flood, tracing friendships, loves and lusts, family and business, until he is just one thread in the rich tapestry of Aleppo.

Khaled Khalifa weaves a sweeping tale of life and death in the hubbub of Aleppine society at the turn of the twentieth century. No One Prayed Over Their Graves is a portrait of a people on the verge of great change—from provincial villages to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews live and work together, united in their love for Aleppo and their dreams for the future.

©2019 Hachette-Antoine; translation copyright 2023 by Leri Price (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Very poetic at times. Thoughtful about love and religion.

Story was sometimes hard to follow. Sometimes the reader spoke in such a low voice it was hard to hear.

Interesting but a bit much

No less than 6 tragic or unrequited love stories over 50 tumultuous years in Aleppo. It is enjoyable overall though it can be a bit much, all the drama, starting on page 1. Still, there is a plethora of ideas here that make it worth a read. The translation is clearly written but I get a sense that it does not quite convey the lyricism of the original. The reading is unfortunately a big miss - the characters in particular all sound severely hypothyroid.