Dead Fish Breathe Lemon Peels

Khaled Khalifa

"The importance of this novel lies in the fact that it was the last one written by the renowned novelist before his passing (2023), and it was published a year after his death. In it, Khaled Khalifa talks about the city of Latakia in Syria, with its streets and alleys, and its landmarks, most of which have been disfigured by administrative corruption and contractors' deals. He mourns the city through the death of its young people's dreams. They are a group of musicians, poets, and a dancer who tried to breathe life back into a dying city, but they were met with devastating disappointments. Neither their musical dreams came true, nor did their love stories survive, nor did their future lead to the achievements they hoped for. They are defeated youth: Yara chased her dream of dancing all the way to Canada where life consumed and displaced her, and Rony did not keep up with her as a lover should; he was and remained after her more depressed than to defend his life. Mariana escaped her burning love for Sam by burning her own life. Sam remained torn between his family's expectations of him and snatching some power through currying favor with authority, and between Bob Marley and a bohemian life. Each of the novel's protagonists, "the freaks" as their friend Manal calls them, has their suffering, their peeling, and their disappointment, and each of them has an illusion that swallowed them at the end of the story.

Khaled Khalifa — (1964-2023) was a Syrian novelist and screenwriter whose works have been translated into many languages. He is the author of "No Knives in the Kitchens of This City" (2013), which was short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2013. This was his fourth novel after "The Guard of Deception" (1993), "Gypsy Notebooks" (2000), and "In Praise of Hatred" (2006), which was also short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He also wrote a number of television series, including "The Al-Jalali Biography" (1999), "Relative Calm" (2009), and "The Key" (2011). "Dead Fish Breathe Lemon Peels," published a year after his death, is his third and final novel from Naufal House, following "No One Prayed Over Them" (2019) and "Death Is Hard Work" (2016)."