Death Is Hard Work

National Book Award Finalist: “The poetic and horrific combine in this tale of love and death set in a Syria torn apart by civil war” ( Guardian , UK). As elderly Abdel Latif dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus, he relays his final wish to his youngest son Bolbol: to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, he persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which