On March 1, 2012, Fouad Ajami (USA) wrote a long analysis and review of Khalifa’s In praise of hatred for The New Republic.
Fouad Ajami is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and co-chairman of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
As the book is soon being published in the US, below are a few excerpts of Ajami’s review.

All this may sound fantastic, but Khalifa has no need of magical realism. He invents no extravagant flights of fancy. His novel is …

“He thought his plays would transform Arab society, and all his life he was disappointed that they did not,” said Robert Myers, the playwright and AUB professor who cotranslated “Rituals.”

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (also known as Arab Man Booker) has announced its long list yesterday, Tuesday January 7th. The long list can be found below, and details on each book are on the IPAF‘s website.

Khaled always entered first and greeted the customers sitting at tables near the door. He bent down, kissed the men, flirted with the women, and strutted to where Nabil, Qasabji’s owner, had cleaned a spot for us. He ordered either a glass of arak or the local Damascene beer, Barada, pulled a cigarette from his pack, lit it, and added to the purplish haze of smoke.

It is not difficult to understand why Samar Yazbek angers the regime in Syria. A dark streak of light is certainly not the reason she fled their home country, nevertheless, this fictional narrative is a biting criticism of Syrian society.

Cinnamon, the novel by Syrian author Samar Yazbek just came out in Sweden (Ordfront) and Norway (Cappelen Damm).