The sensuality of his fiction is frequently related to olfaction. Few living writers pay as much attention to smell as Khalifa does ... A tension between faith and reason plays out in each of these stories. This is a secular novel about religious madness. Lives are at stake ... Nadine Gordimer said in her Paris Review interview that she didn’t mind being puzzled when reading a novel. I don’t either, generally. But Khalifa goes to great lengths to frustrate his readers. This narrative shifts back and forth in time ... The intricacies of Khalifa’s plotting, and his occasional vagueness, have led critics to compare him to Faulkner. But Faulkner’s characters feel more real than those in No One Prayed Over Their Graves. They’re earthier. Khalifa’s too often flop between stereotypes — saints or sinners, lovers or fighters ... Khalifa buries his story under a late-Rushdie-like muchness, with embellishment upon embellishment. There are prophecies and rising souls and forbidden loves; every tear is bitterly wept. There are conversions and renunciations of conversions. Your eyeballs begin to glaze over, as if they were ceramic plates. Everything is desperate, to paraphrase the old Adam Ant song, but somehow not serious.
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