The most powerful and vivid account of the war in Syria and its cost in ruined lives

Khaled Khalifa's short but intense and demanding novel, Death is Hard Work (2016tr. Leri Price), gives what I imagine to be the most accurate and harrowing account of what it's like to try to live an ordinary life in the midst of war-torn and dysfunctional present-day Syria. The novel in some ways recalls Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, as the plot line is about three siblings transporting the body of their father some 200 miles across the country to be buried, following his deathbed request, next to his sister in their home town. On their journey across the country they encounter numerous obstacles and hindrances - many checkpoints, roads and routes impossible to follow or traverse, passage through the territories controlled by various and often hostile military/political factions, car trouble, attack by wild dogs, red tape, lack of food and supplies - and all the while the corpse rots and falls apart, described in stomach-knotting detail. Unlike Faulkner's novel, however, this novel contains little humor and lots of insight into the ongoing warfare in Syria and how it affects the daily lives and the psychic states of Syrians. Death is everywhere, and what becomes remarkable is the rare case in which someone dies of old age or natural causes; we sense that nobody in the country will ever recover from the trauma of these years. But the novel, though potentially cinematic, is more than a cross-country adventure yarn: Over the course of their journey, which stretches out to 3 or 4 days (they'd though it  would take them just one day) we learn about the sad and damaged lives of each of the main characters, all of whom, it seems, were forced or walked into sad and loveless marriages - and in particular we learn about the late father's sister who self-immolated rather than marry a man she didn't love. The central character is the younger brother, Bolbol, divorced, living alone, taking on responsibility for his father in his last days, sensing that he has wasted his life and that, in the midst of civil war, he has no future - but also no way out. Devoid of politics and ideology in the conventional sense, Khalifa's novel is  a landmark book, the first and best I think to depict the cost in damaged and ruined lives of this ongoing war of terror and oppression.