Death Is Hard Work: A Novel. Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature 2013

Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village. With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings' decision to set aside their differences and honor their father's request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest.