Reading Groups

Reading Khaled Khalifa Through the Lens of William Faulkner with Elizabeth Howard

3 Sessions Tuesdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT May 6 to June 3, 2025

The Center for Fiction

featured-images.reading-groups.2025-spring-b2.145-1495

The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
5/6, 5/20, 6/3
In Person at The Center for Fiction

Khaled Khalifa, born in a village in Syria in January 1964, was considered one of Syria’s most celebrated writers before his death, at the age of fifty-nine, in 2023. His novel No Knives in the Kitchens of This City was awarded the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and was a finalist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. One of the recurrent themes in Khalifa’s novels is the struggle between the individual and the political system, and the suffering of Syrians at the hands of the government. In 2012, when he was hospitalized, he began to imagine what it would be like if it was necessary for a family to transport a corpse through a war zone. Death Is Hard Work, a finalist for the National Book Award, restages the narrative through the lens and the influence of William Faulkner’s, As I Lay Dying. The novel was published in Arabic in 2016, translated by Leri Price, and published in 2019 in the UK.

We will read and discuss Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying before reading Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work and consider the influence of Faulkner and the connection between the body and its surroundings: political, economic, cultural, and natural. How a contemporary author has used Faulkner’s structure to bring the universal into contact with the specific.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Read As I Lay Dying through page 84 – through the chapter Vardaman – “My mother is a fish.”

What to expect from this reading group: This course will be participant-driven and conversational.

Reading List:

Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Capacity: 20

Led by

Elizabeth Howard

Elizabeth Howard

Elizabeth Howard is the producer and host of the Short Fuse Podcast, conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and others whose art reveals our communities through their lens and stirs us to seek change. Her articles related to communication and marketing have appeared in European Communications, Investor Relations, Law Firm Marketing & Profit Report, Communication World, The Strategist, and the New York Law Journal, among others. Her books include Queen Anne’s Lace and Wild Blackberry Pie, (Thornwillow Press, 2011), A Day with Bonefish Joe (David Godine, 2015) and Ned O’Gorman: A Glance Back (Easton Studio Press, 2016).

Elizabeth Howard lives in New York City.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

Groups+Workshops

More Groups+Workshops

Groups+Workshops