A well-known novelist and journalist from the coastal city of Jableh, Samar Yazbek witnessed the beginning four months of the uprising first-hand and actively participated in a variety of public actions and budding social movements. Throughout this period she kept a diary of personal reflections on, and observations of, this historic time. Because of the outspoken views she published in print and online, Yazbek quickly attracted the attention and fury of the regime, vicious rumours started to spread about her disloyalty to the homeland and the Alawite community to which she belongs. The lyrical narrative describes her struggle to protect herself and her young daughter, even as her activism propels her into a horrifying labyrinth of insecurity after she is forced into living on the run and detained multiple times, excluded from the Alawite community and renounced by her family, her hometown and even her childhood friends. With rare empathy and journalistic prowess Samar Yazbek compiled oral testimonies from ordinary Syrians all over the country. Filled with snapshots of exhilarating hope and horrifying atrocities, she offers us a wholly unique perspective on the Syrian uprising. Hers is a modest yet powerful testament to the strength and commitment of countless unnamed Syrians who have united to fight for their freedom. These diaries will inspire all those who read them, and challenge the world to look anew at the trials and tribulations of the Syrian uprising.

A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution

With Hyman and photographer Peter Cassidy as guides, you can travel the coast and interior mountain regions of this romantic and historic island from the comfort of your own armchair. Along the way you'll meet the best bakers and cheesemakers, as well as producers of nuts, olives, lemons, and artichokes. You'll learn the secrets of artisan pasta manufacturing and perfect espresso, sample the local wines and street food, enjoy the markets and fiestas, and encounter the passionate characters who are placing the island's food at the top of every gourmet's shopping list.

The Dark Side of Love

Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad and his junta regime have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Syrians in the name of fighting terrorism. Former political prisoner, and current refugee, Yassin al-Haj Saleh exposes the lies that enable Assad to continue on his reign of terror as well as the complicity of both Russia and the US in atrocities endured by Syrians.

The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy

In 1980s Syria, a young Muslim girl lives a secluded life behind the veil in the vast and perfumed house of her grandparents. Her three aunts—the pious Maryam, the liberal Safaa, and the free-spirited Marwa—raise her with the aid of their ever-devoted blind servant. Soon the high walls of the family home are no longer able to protect the girl from the social and political chaos outside. Witnessing the ruling dictatorship's bloody campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, she is filled with hatred for the regime and becomes increasingly radical. In the footsteps of her beloved uncle, Bakr, she launches herself into a fight for her religion, her country, and ultimately, for her own future. Against the backdrop of real-life events, "In Praise of Hatred "is a stirring, layered story that echoes the violence currently plaguing the Middle East.

In Praise of Hatred

In 2011, many Syrians took to the streets of Damascus to demand the overthrow of the government of Bashar al-Assad. Today, much of Syria has become a warzone and many worry that the country is on the brink of collapse.
  
"Burning Country" explores the complicated reality of life in present-day Syria with unprecedented detail and sophistication, drawing on new first-hand testimonies from opposition fighters, exiles lost in an archipelago of refugee camps, and courageous human rights activists. Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami expertly interweave these stories with an incisive analysis of the militarization of the uprising, the rise of the Islamists and sectarian warfare, and the role of Syria’s government in exacerbating the brutalization of the conflict. Through these accounts and a broad range of secondary source material, the authors persuasively argue that the international community has failed in its stated commitments to support the Syrian opposition movements.
  
 Covering ISIS and Islamism, regional geopolitics, new grassroots revolutionary organizations, and the worst refugee crisis since World War Two, "Burning Country" is a vivid and groundbreaking look at a modern-day political and humanitarian nightmare.


Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War

ثلاثة وعشرون ناشراً ألمانياً رفضوا طبع هذه الرواية. لم يخطر ببال أحد منهم أن قصة عن دمشف، وعن الحديث الشفهي، تهم أي قارئ ألماني، فالأدب العربي كان آنذاك قارة مجهولة. وكان رفيق شامي كاتباً مغموراً نشر سبعة كتب لم تلق نجاحاً يذكر. وبعد عناءٍ، أخذ مدير جديد لإحدى دور النشر النص، وأوكل أحد خبرائه بتنقيح الكتاب، فقصقص أجنحة القصة الدمشقية ليحولها إلى رواية أوروبية صغيرة لطيفة لا أثر فيها للشفاهية.
كانت تلك اللحظة حاسمة في مسيرة رفيق شامي الأدبية. بعد تفكير دام ثلاثة أيام أبلغ الناشر أنه يرفض هذا التنقيح وأنه لا يريد تغيير سطر من أسطر الكتاب وكانت المفاجأة أجابه الناشر أنه عندما قرأ اقتراحات المحقق قال له: لن يقبل بهكذا مسخ لرواية أي كاتب يحترم نفسه. لذلك قرر أن يوكل رجلاً آخر بتدقيق لغة النص فقط والحفاظ عليها كما رواها رفيق شامي. وهكذا كان.
صدر هذا الكتاب في تشرين الأول (أكتوبر) 1989م وبيع منه خلال السنة الأولى 200 ألف نسخة وبيعت حقوق الترجمة لـ 22 لغة. وبعد ثلاث سنوات حصد الكتاب ست جوائز أدبية وتجاوزت طبعاته حتى اليوم المليوني نسخة.

Damascus Nights

Fragments of Memory is an autobiographical novel about the life of a boy born to a poor family in northern Syria. Mina sets these personal events against a richly detailed description of events in the history of early 20th century Syria, as the silkworm industry gave way to modern foreign technology. The mode of life described is one of 3 bygone era.

Fragments of Memory: A Story of a Syrian Family

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat. 

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. 

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Kassem Eid survived arrest in al-Assad’s regime, a chemical weapons attack that shocked the world, and the siege of a city where he fought with the Syrian rebel army. This is his story—a unique and powerfully moving testimony for our times, with a foreword by Janine di Giovanni.

On August 21, 2013, Kassem Eid nearly died in a sarin gas attack in the town of Moadamiya. At least 1,500 people were killed. Later that day, he was hit by a mortar while helping the Free Syrian Army fight government forces. He survived that, too. But his entire world—friends, neighbors, family, everything he knew—had been devastated beyond repair.

Eid recalls moving to Moadamiya in 1989, at the age of three. The streets where he and his eleven siblings played were fragrant with jasmine. But he soon realized that he was treated differently at school because of his family's Palestinian immigrant origins, and their resistance to the brutal regime. When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000, hopes that he would ease the state's severity were swiftly crushed.

The unprecedented scope of this brave, deeply felt memoir makes it unique in the body of literature to emerge from the Syrian civil war. Eid illuminates the realities of growing up in a corrupt dictatorship; the strictures of living under siege; the impact of unspeakable violence; and how, at extraordinary personal risk, he drew worldwide attention to the assault on cities across Syria. This is a searing account of oppression, war, grit, and escape, and a heartbreaking love letter to a world lost forever.

My Country: A Syrian Memoir

"I am learning how to be
sad
and happy
at the same time."

Jude never thought she’d be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives.

At first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. The American movies that Jude has always loved haven’t quite prepared her for starting school in the US—and her new label of “Middle Eastern,” an identity she’s never known before. But this life also brings unexpected surprises—there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude might just try out for. Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is.

Other Words for Home

Nadia’s family is forced to flee their home in Aleppo, Syria, when the Arab Spring sparks a civil war in this timely coming-of-age novel from award-winning author N.H. Senzai.

"Silver and gold balloons. A birthday cake covered in pink roses. A new dress. "

Nadia stands at the center of attention in her parents’ elegant dining room. "This is the best day of my life", she thinks. Everyone is about to sing “Happy Birthday,” when her uncle calls from the living room, “"Baba", brothers, you need to see this.” Reluctantly, she follows her family into the other room. On TV, a reporter stands near an overturned vegetable cart on a dusty street. Beside it is a mound of smoldering ashes. The reporter explains that a vegetable vendor in the city of Tunis burned himself alive, protesting corrupt government officials who have been harassing his business. Nadia frowns.

It is December 17, 2010: Nadia’s twelfth birthday and the beginning of the Arab Spring. Soon anti-government protests erupt across the Middle East and, one by one, countries are thrown into turmoil. As civil war flares in Syria and bombs fall across Nadia’s home city of Aleppo, her family decides to flee to safety. Inspired by current events, this novel sheds light on the complicated situation in Syria that has led to an international refugee crisis, and tells the story of one girl’s journey to safety.

Escape from Aleppo

Available in English for the first time, "The Silence and the Roar" is a funny, sexy, dystopian novel about the struggle of an individual over tyranny.

   "The Silence and the Roar" follows a day in the life of Fathi Sheen, an author banned from publishing because he refuses to write propaganda for the ruling government. The entire populace has mobilized to celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the reigning despot in this unnamed Middle eastern country. The heat is oppressive and loudspeakers blare as an endless parade takes over the streets. Desperate to get away from the noise and the zombie-like masses, Fathi leaves his house to visit his mother and his girlfriend, but en route stops to help a student who is being beaten by the police. Fathi’s iD papers are confiscated and he is told to report to the police station before night falls.

   When Fathi turns himself in, he is led from one department to another in an ever-widening bureaucratic labyrinth. His only weapon against the irrationality of the government employees is his sense of irony. Tinged with a Kafkaesque sense of the absurd, "The Silence and the Roar" explores what it means to be truly free in mind and body.

The Silence and the Roar

"The Arab of the Future", the #1 French best-seller, tells the unforgettable story of Riad Sattouf's childhood, spent in the shadows of 3 dictators—Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez al-Assad, and his father

In striking, virtuoso graphic style that captures both the immediacy of childhood and the fervor of political idealism, Riad Sattouf recounts his nomadic childhood growing up in rural France, Gaddafi's Libya, and Assad's Syria--but always under the roof of his father, a Syrian Pan-Arabist who drags his family along in his pursuit of grandiose dreams for the Arab nation.

Riad, delicate and wide-eyed, follows in the trail of his mismatched parents; his mother, a bookish French student, is as modest as his father is flamboyant. Venturing first to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab State and then joining the family tribe in Homs, Syria, they hold fast to the vision of the paradise that always lies just around the corner. And hold they do, though food is scarce, children kill dogs for sport, and with locks banned, the Sattoufs come home one day to discover another family occupying their apartment. The ultimate outsider, Riad, with his flowing blond hair, is called the ultimate insult… Jewish. And in no time at all, his father has come up with yet another grand plan, moving from building a new people to building his own great palace.

Brimming with life and dark humor, "The Arab of the Future" reveals the truth and texture of one eccentric family in an absurd Middle East, and also introduces a master cartoonist in a work destined to stand alongside "Maus" and "Persepolis".

The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir

In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one Syrian family descends into tragedy and ruin.

Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. She and her siblings and mother are slowly choked in violence and decay, as their lives are plundered by a brutal regime.

Set between the 1960s and 2000s, "No Knives in the Kitchens of this City" unravels the systems of fear and control under Assad. With eloquence and startling honesty, it speaks of the persecution of a whole society.

No Knives in the Kitchens of This City: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Adam is a tortured soul. Exiled from his homeland, forced to watch the horrors unfold from afar. His family, still living – or surviving – in war-torn Syria struggle daily to feed, clothe, and educate their children.

Adam tries to be a ‘global citizen’ and become a part of his new community in Malaysia, but is constantly faced with intolerance, bigotry, and plain old racism. Opportunities are few and Adam finds himself working long hours for poor pay so that he can help his family.

The increasingly distressing news bulletins, along with Adam’s haunting childhood memories, compel him to examine his own beliefs; in God, in humanity, in himself and his integrity as a reluctant bystander in the worst human catastrophe of the twenty-first century.

An Ishmael of Syria

A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, "Brothers of the Gun" is an intimate lens on the century's bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom.

"This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple's extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict."--Bryan Stevenson, author of "Just Mercy"

In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends--fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq--joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another's eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country's president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble.

Marwan was there to witness and document firsthand the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. He watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He saw the country that ran through his veins--the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears--be destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape.

Illustrated with more than eighty ink drawings by Molly Crabapple that bring to life the beauty and chaos, "Brothers of the Gun" offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution--and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope.

"From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth."--Pankaj Mishra, author of "Age of Anger "and "From the Ruins of Empire
"
"A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time."--Angela Davis

Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War

In May of 2012, Janine di Giovanni travelled to Syria. It would mark the beginning of a long relationship with the country, starting with her coverage of the peaceful uprising and continuing as the situation quickly turned into one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawn to the stories of the ordinary people caught up in the conflict, Syria came to consume her every moment, her every emotion.

Speaking to those directly involved in the war, di Giovanni relays here the personal stories of rebel fighters thrown in jail at the least provocation; of children and families forced to watch loved ones taken and killed by regime forces with dubious justifications; and the stories of the elite, holding pool parties in Damascus hotels, trying to deny the human consequences of the nearby shelling.

Delivered with passion, fearlessness and sensitivity, "The Morning They Came For Us" is an unflinching account of a nation on the brink of disintegration, charting an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war – and an unforgettable testament to human resilience in the face of devastating, unimaginable horrors.

The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria

"#1 Bestseller in Asian-American Literature!
Available in paperback, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited!
Winner of the 2019 Independent Press Award "

From the ashes of the Syrian Civil War comes this story of hope, love, and courage... 

After standing for over 7,000 years, Aleppo's ruin came overnight. Separated from his family during the night the rebels attacked the city, 13-year-old Zaid Kadir is lost in the middle of a war zone. Alongside his friends, he is forced to survive the dangers of a civil war he does not even fully understand. 

Zaid witnesses the destruction of the brutal Syrian Civil War as it grows more deadly by the day and rips his city apart. However, as he braves this destruction, as he desperately tries to survive this catastrophe, he discovers something. Zaid realizes that it is in the darkest hours when humanity's spirit of hope burns brightest.


  What readers are saying:

"The 
  "Heart of Aleppo"
 does for Syria what 
  "The Kite Runner"
 did for Afghanistan."
"Heart-wrenching, powerful story that portrays heroism and hope under the worst circumstances!"
"As a fan of 
  "The Book Thief,"
 I really enjoyed this read."
"Moving tale of how war effects children! I have seen the war reported on the news, but this book really brings it home how it has affected families on a day to day basis."

The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War

It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer who creates unusual, hand-painted maps, decides to move Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. But the country Nour’s mother once knew is changing, and it isn’t long before protests and shelling threaten their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a shell destroys Nour’s house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee as refugees across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety. As their journey becomes more and more challenging, Nour’s idea of home becomes a dream she struggles to remember and a hope she cannot live without.

More than eight hundred years earlier, Rawiya, sixteen and a widow’s daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Restless and longing to see the world, she leaves home to seek her fortune. Disguising herself as a boy named Rami, she becomes an apprentice to al-Idrisi, who has been commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily to create a map of the world. In his employ, Rawiya embarks on an epic journey across the Middle East and the north of Africa where she encounters ferocious mythical beasts, epic battles, and real historical figures.

A deep immersion into the richly varied cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, The Map of Salt and Stars follows the journeys of Nour and Rawiya as they travel along identical paths across the region eight hundred years apart, braving the unknown beside their companions as they are pulled by the promise of reaching home at last.

The Map of Salt and Stars

Award-winning journalist Delphine Minoui recounts the true story of a band of young rebels in a besieged Syrian town, who find hope and connection making an underground library from the rubble of war

Day in, day out, bombs fall on Daraya, a town outside Damascus, the very spot where the Syrian Civil War began. In the midst of chaos and bloodshed, a group searching for survivors stumbles on a cache of books. They collect the books, then look for more. In a week they have six thousand volumes. In a month, fifteen thousand. A sanctuary is born: a library where the people of Daraya can explore beyond the blockade.

Long a site of peaceful resistance to the Assad regimes, Daraya was under siege for four years. No one entered or left, and international aid was blocked.

In 2015, French-Iranian journalist Delphine Minoui saw a post on Facebook about this secret library and tracked down one of its founders, twenty-three-year-old Ahmad, an aspiring photojournalist himself. Over WhatsApp and Facebook, Minoui learned about the young men who gathered in the library, exchanged ideas, learned English, and imagined how to shape the future, even as bombs fell above. They devoured a marvelous range of books--from American self-help like "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" to international bestsellers like "The Alchemist", from Arabic poetry by Mahmoud Darwish to Shakespearean plays to stories of war in other times and places, such as the siege of Sarajevo. They also shared photos and stories of their lives before and during the war, planned how to build a democracy, and began to sustain a community in shell-shocked soil.

As these everyday heroes struggle to hold their ground, they become as much an inspiration as the books they read. And in the course of telling their stories, Delphine Minoui makes this far-off, complicated war immediate. In the vein of classic tales of the triumph of the human spirit--like "All the Beautiful Forevers", "A Long Way Gone", and "Reading Lolita in Tehran"--"The Book Collectors" will inspire readers and encourage them to imagine the wider world.

The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War

The unforgettable love story of a mother blinded by loss and her husband who insists on their survival as they undertake the Syrian refugee trail to Europe.

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees.

As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again.

Moving, powerful, compassionate, and beautifully written, "The Beekeeper of Aleppo" is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. It is the kind of book that reminds us of the power of storytelling.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Through a stellar cast of politicians, diplomats, spies and soldiers - including T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle - 'A Line in the Sand' tells the story of the short but crucial era when Britain and France ruled the Middle East.

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

A dogged, absurd quest through the nightmare of the Syrian civil war

Khaled Khalifa's" Death Is Hard Work" is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination.

Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is--after all--only a two-hour drive from Damascus.

There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone.

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. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way--as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed--will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them.

Death Is Hard Work

From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.

The Refugees

Drawing on the author’s personal experience of living and working as an architect in Syria, this timely and fascinating account offers an eyewitness perspective on the country’s bitter conflict through the lens of architecture, showing how the built environment and its destruction hold up a mirror to the communities that inhabit it.



From Syria’s tolerant past, with churches and mosques built alongside one another in Old Homs and members of different religions living harmoniously together, the book chronicles the recent breakdown of social cohesion in Syria’s cities. With the lack of shared public spaces intensifying divisions within the community, and corrupt officials interfering in town planning for their own gain, these actions are symptomatic of wider abuses of power.



With firsthand accounts of mortar attacks and stories of refugees struggling to find a home, "The Battle for Home" is a compelling explanation of the personal impact of the conflict and offers hope for how architecture can play a role in rebuilding a sense of identity within a damaged society.

The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria

In January of 2011, President Bashar al-Assad officially declared Syrian society stable and the government immune to revolt. In the months that followed, and as regimes fell in Egypt and Tunisia, thousands of ordinary Syrians took to the streets calling for an end to Assad's regime. Many lost their lives to the bullets of the president's army. In Revolt, Stephen Starr delves deep into the lives of those affected by the Syrian state over the past five decades. Interviewing people from all levels of society, Starr gathers and interprets the views and beliefs that illustrate why Syria, with its numerous sects and religious diversity, has been so prone to violence and civil instability. Gaining unique access to a country that has been largely cut off from the international media, Starr delivers compelling, first hand testimony from those who have suffered and benefited most from the regime. Revolt reveals why many Syrians wanted Assad's government to stay intact as an alternative to endless civil war. It measures the long-standing gap between the state apparatus and its people and explains what led Syria's youth to finally stand up and call decisively for freedom.Starr also outlines the positions of the country's minorities and describes why many Syrians believe enforced regime change will only lead to region-wide conflict.

Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising

August 21, 2013: A chemical weapons attack on the suburbs of Damascus reminds the world of the existence of the Syrian war. Hundreds of journalists from every corner of the world rush to the frontier only to leave disappointed when Obama decides not to bomb. They leave behind 200,000 estimated victims, and more than half of a population of 22 million people dispersed or refugeed in nearby countries: the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII according to the UN.

Francesca Borri is one of them. But she does not leave. She is 30 years old. For months she covers the battle of Aleppo as a freelance reporter. And she quickly realizes that to report a war is to hide with dozens of women and children, even a baby, born there, in a grave, "a piece of soil under the ground that is as expensive as three houses" or to scavenge for anything to burn for some warmth, "a broken slipper, the plastic hand of a toy" or to mistake bloody figments of skull for rubble. To report a war is also to meet with officials more worried about the stain of snow on their Clarks than the people they are supposed to help. It is to explain what is happening in Aleppo to journalists who have only been there once, on vacation, and bought a carpet. It is risking one's life because of the jealousy of a fellow reporter. And it is also about dreaming of driving at night with the windows open, about remembering impossible little things, the particular light on that day in that café at the beach when you were a kid, the eyes of people you love, all the minuscule simple joys that can be lost in a moment.

"Syrian Dust" is a raw and powerful account of the Syrian war that throws the listener right in the middle of it, without any shelter.

Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

"The first book of reportage covering the flight of refugees from Syria to Europe via the Mediterranean. With colour photos."

Award-winning journalist Wolfgang Bauer and photographer Stanislav Krupař were the first undercover reporters to document the journey of Syrian refugees from Egypt to Europe. Posing as English teachers in 2014, they were direct witnesses to the brutality of smuggler gangs, the processes of detainment and deportation, the dangers of sea-crossing on rickety boats, and the final furtive journey through Europe. Combining their own travels with other eyewitness accounts in the first book of reportage of its kind, Crossing the Sea brings to life both the systemic problems and the individual faces behind the crisis, and is a passionate appeal for more humanitarian refugee policies.

Crossing the Sea: With Syrians on the Exodus to Europe

In this “gripping and personal view of war” (Andy McNab, author of" Bravo Two Zero"), a celebrated photographer crafts a powerful memoir about his experiences in some of the world’s most dangerous, war-torn areas—and his terrifying capture by Syrian rebels in 2013.

For a decade, Jonathan Alpeyrie—a French‑American photojournalist—had ventured in and out of more than a dozen conflict zones. He photographed civilians being chased out of their homes, military trucks roving over bullet‑torn battlefields, and too many bodies to count. But on April 29, 2013, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie became the story.
 
For eighty‑one days he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten by Syrian rebels. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strove to find the humanity in his captors. He took part in their activities, taught them how to swim, prayed with them, and tried learning their language and culture. He also discovered a dormant faith within himself, one that strengthened him throughout the ordeal.
 
"The Shattered Lens" is a firsthand account that “reads like a thriller” ("The New York Journal of Books") by a photojournalist who has always answered the next adrenaline‑pumping assignment. Yet, during his headline‑making kidnapping and “for all his suffering, Alpeyrie expresses, in words and color photographs, the compassion of a global citizen seeing beyond his personal terror and into the nuances of human interactions” ("Booklist").

The Shattered Lens: A War Photographer's True Story of Captivity and Survival in Syria

Flight From Syria: Refugee Stories

When Peter Clark arrived in Damascus 1992 to open the new British Council office, he was not to know that the next five years were to give him an unique window on the upper echelons of Syrian society in the last few years of Hafez Al-Assad's rule. Here we see the dramas and routines of everyday life played out against the backdrop of the world's oldest continually inhabited city on the eve of collapse into civil war. Enchanting and alarming by turns, everyday events combine to paint a vivid and almost nostalgic picture of life in this remarkable city.

Damascus Diaries: Life Under the Assads

This report's analytic forecasts should help the United States determine how to support Jordan as it faces the Syrian refugee crisis. Jordanians are dissatisfied with many aspects of their government, but the chaos in neighboring states has thus far deterred civil or violent actions. If Jordan wisely invests international refugee support, it can increase popular opinion by improving the lives of Syrian refugees and Jordanian citizens.

From Negative to Positive Stability: How the Syrian Refugee Crisis Can Improve Jordan's Outlook

Journey to a world little known to western readers. Palestinian sociologist and activist Anan Ameri weaves her sometimes poignant, sometimes funny personal experiences with the historical, political, and social changes that dominated the region in which she lived during the first thirty years of her life. This memoir comprises twenty-three stories that take place in various Arab cities. It starts with a few vignettes about the displacement of Anans family during the 1948 Nakba (Disaster) and her constant movement from West Jerusalem, to Damascus, to East Jerusalem, to finally settling in Amman, Jordan. The book contrasts the instability of moving from place to place with the security, fun, and luxury offered by her mothers large, wealthy Damascene family. It also takes the reader into the life of an elegant Damascene home, with all its elitist traditions, powerful women, as well as the intrigue of its many secrets and rumors. The later stories focus on the authors gradual coming of age during 1950s and 1960san era of Arab nationalism and international solidarity. Readers will venture with Anan to Amman, the capital of Jordan; to Cairo, the political and cultural capital of the Arab world; and finally to Beirut, the new home to the Palestinian Liberation movement. Anan Ameris experiences reflect the evolving of post-colonial Arab societies of her time, and the contradictory world around her. The result is a compelling and unforgettable memoir.

The Scent of Jasmine: Coming of Age in Jerusalem and Damascus

A blistering firsthand account of the conflict in Homs by the internationally acclaimed author of "The Kindly Ones"

"“We fight for our religion, for our women, for our land, and lastly to save our skin. As for them, they’re only fighting to save their skin.”"

In 2012, Jonathan Littell traveled to the heart of the Syrian uprising, smuggled in by the Free Syrian Army to the historic city of Homs. For three weeks, he watched as neighborhoods were bombed and innocent civilians murdered. His notes on what he saw on the ground speak directly of horrors that continue today in the ongoing civil war.

Amid the chaos, Littell bears witness to the lives and the hopes of freedom fighters, of families caught within the conflict, as well as of the doctors who attempt to save both innocents and combatants who come under fire. As government forces encircle the city, Littell charts the first stirrings of the fundamentalist movement that would soon hijack the revolution.

 Littell’s notebooks were originally the raw material for the articles he wrote upon his return for the French daily "Le Monde". Published nearly immediately afterward in France, "Syrian Notebooks" has come to form an incomparable close-up account of a war that still grips the Middle East—a classic of war reportage.

Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising

Framed by Hénin s personal experience as a hostage of ISIS alongside James Foley, "Jihad Academy" debunks the myths surrounding Islamic extremism and provides a clear and revealing insight into the sect s strange and distorted world. By invading Iraq in 2003 and not intervening in Syria since 2011, the West helped fuel radicalisation and continues to fuel it, by making diplomatic compromises with dictators, by refusing to heed the suffering of populations, and by failing to offer a convincing counter-narrative or a political alternative. 



Hénin shows how Western societies share the responsibility for the creation of the new jihadists, explains how they are moulded and how the West has played Islamic State s game and spread its propaganda, allowing it to enlist more and more recruits ready to fight for a distorted vision of Islam. In the final chapters he advances possible strategies for repairing what can still be repaired.

Jihad Academy: The Rise of Islamic State

In May 2013, Daniel Rye traveled to Syria for a planned three-day trip to photograph the effects of the war on civilians. While there, he was captured by ISIS and held for a nightmarish thirteen months. Held alongside hostages of 13 different nationalities, Daniel was starved and tortured, and he was the last of the hostages to leave captivity alive.

Walking readers through Daniel’s everyday experiences in captivity, this compelling account also follows Daniel’s family and their nerve-wracking negotiations with his kidnappers, tracing their horrifying journey through impossible dilemmas and offering a rare glimpse into the secret world of the investigation launched to locate and free not only Daniel, but also the American freelance journalist and fellow hostage James Foley. Capitalizing on a Danish legal loophole, Daniel’s friends and family were ultimately able to raise $2.2 million to secure his release. 

Written with Daniel’s full cooperation and based on interviews with former fellow prisoners, jihadists, and key figures who worked behind the scenes to secure his release, The ISIS Hostage offers a compelling window into life under the veil of the Islamic State and tells a moving and terrifying story of friendship and survival.

The ISIS Hostage: One Man's True Story of Thirteen Months in Captivity

Since the beginning of 2011, the political situation in Syria has consistently found itself at the top of news broadcasts, newspaper headlines and the agendas of politicians. Little-known, however, has been the struggle of the Kurds in Syria to have their voice heard on the political stage and to have equitable access to both economic and political resources. Here, Harriet Allsopp examines contemporary Kurdish politics in Syria, concentrating on the Syrian-Kurdish political parties which operate illegally in the country. It is these parties which, despite state sanctions, have attempted to promote their political agendas and to bring about change for the approximately 3 million Kurds that currently reside in Syria. "The Kurds of Syria" explores the fundamental issues of minority identity and the concept of being 'stateless' in a turbulent region, as well as the organization of political parties in Syria, making it vital for all those researching the politics of the modern Middle East.

The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East

Freedom Hospital est la première bande dessinée de Hamid Sulaiman, artiste plasticien syrien qui a fui son pays en 2011 et trouvé refuge en France après une année dans la clandestinité. Sulaiman s'inspire d'histoires vécues par des personnes de son entourage pour raconter les débuts de la guerre en Syrie, des premières manifestations pacifiques de 2011 jusqu'aux prémices de Daech. Son récit est centré sur le Freedom Hospital, un hôpital clandestin créé par une militante pacifique, Yasmine, dans une ville imaginaire semblable à beaucoup de petites villes de province syriennes… Dans cet hôpital cohabitent avec Yasmine une dizaine de personnages, malades et soignants, reflétant la diversité de la société syrienne, un kurde, un alaouite, une journaliste franco-syrienne, des membres de l'Armée libre et un islamiste radical. Leurs relations vont évoluer en fonction des événements. Engagement politique, trahisons, retournements d'alliance et l'horreur de la guerre sont au cœur de l'histoire de ce groupe d'individus, pantins de l'histoire, pris dans une tourmente dont les enjeux les dépassent totalement. À travers ce terrible récit, mis en scène de façon expressionniste, avec de très forts contrastes de lumière qui noient les hommes et la ville sous un déluge d'ombres et de lumière, Hamid Sulaiman pousse un cri de rage contre la guerre, pour l'amour et la paix.

Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story

The general theme of Breaking Knees, as of much of Tamer’s work, is repression: of the individual by the institutions of state and religion and of individuals by each other, particularly women by men. Thus the question of authority – political, social, sexual and religious – forms the thematic core of the book, with (female) sexuality receiving the lion’s share of concern. Political authority is manifest in the emphasis in many stories on the machinations of the police state – arbitrary arrest and detention, interrogations, corruption. Social authority expresses itself in the patriarchal cultural order and dominance of religious and cultural institutions and conventions that constrain individual freedom. Many stories stress religious hypocrisy and the unfilled sexual expectations of women. In bringing together religion, politics and sexuality (sometimes all three in the same story), the author is telling us indirectly that these forms of oppression are all connected. From the perspective of the countless Arab individuals who have adopted modern values based on democratic institutions and human rights, the state of affairs characterized by political and cultural stagnation, a destructive worship of tradition and a glorification of a mythical past, appears truly dire.

Breaking Knees: Modern Arabic Short Stories from Syria

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick reveals how the strain of militant Islam now raising its banner across Iraq and Syria spread from a remote Jordanian prison with the unwitting aid of American military intervention.

     When he succeeded his father in 1999, King Abdullah of Jordan released a batch of political prisoners in the hopes of smoothing his transition to power. Little did he know that among those released was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man who would go on to become a terrorist mastermind too dangerous even for al-Qaeda and give rise to an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East.
     Zarqawi began by directing hotel bombings and assassinations in Jordan from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the American invasion of that country in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By identifying him as the link between Saddam and bin Laden, the CIA inadvertently created a monster. Like-minded radicals saw him as a hero resisting the infidel occupiers and rallied to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings continued for years until Jordanian intelligence provided the Americans with the crucial intelligence needed to eliminate Zarqawi in a 2006 airstrike.
     But his movement endured, first called al-Qaeda in Iraq, then renamed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, seeking refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. And as the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi's dream of a sweeping, ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate. 
     Drawing on unique access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Joby Warrick weaves together heart-pounding, moment-by-moment operational details with overarching historical perspectives to reveal the long trajectory of today's most dangerous Islamic extremist threat.


"From the Hardcover edition."

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

From 1970 until his death in 2000, Hafiz Asad ruled Syria with an iron fist. His regime controlled every aspect of daily life. Seeking to preempt popular unrest, Asad sometimes facilitated the expression of anti-government sentiment by appropriating the work of artists and writers, turning works of protest into official agitprop. Syrian dissidents were forced to negotiate between the desire to genuinely criticize the authoritarian regime, the risk to their own safety and security that such criticism would invite, and the fear that their work would be co-opted as government propaganda, as what miriam cooke calls “commissioned criticism.” In this intimate account of dissidence in Asad’s Syria, cooke describes how intellectuals attempted to navigate between charges of complicity with the state and treason against it.A renowned scholar of Arab cultures, cooke spent six months in Syria during the mid-1990s familiarizing herself with the country’s literary scene, particularly its women writers. While she was in Damascus, dissidents told her that to really understand life under Hafiz Asad, she had to speak with playwrights, filmmakers, and, above all, the authors of “prison literature.” She shares what she learned in "Dissident Syria". She describes touring a sculptor’s studio, looking at the artist’s subversive work as well as at pieces commissioned by the government. She relates a playwright’s view that theater is unique in its ability to stage protest through innuendo and gesture. Turning to film, she shares filmmakers’ experiences of making movies that are praised abroad but rarely if ever screened at home. Filled with the voices of writers and artists, "Dissident Syria" reveals a community of conscience within Syria to those beyond its borders.

Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official

The Sandcastle Girls is a sweeping historical love story steeped in Chris Bohjalian's Armenian heritage. 

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The year is 1915 and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo and travels south into Egypt to join the British army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost. 

Fast forward to the present day, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents' ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed "The Ottoman Annex," Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura's grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family's history that reveals love, loss - and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

Syria

A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution

Samar Yazbek

The Dark Side of Love

Rafik Schami

The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy

ياسين الحاج صالح

In Praise of Hatred

Khaled Khalifa

Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War

Robin Yassin-Kassab

Damascus Nights

Rafik Schami

Fragments of Memory: A Story of a Syrian Family

حنا مينه

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson

My Country: A Syrian Memoir

Kassem Eid

Other Words for Home

Jasmine Warga

Escape from Aleppo

N.H. Senzai

The Silence and the Roar

Nihad Sirees

The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir

Riad Sattouf

No Knives in the Kitchens of This City: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Khaled Khalifa

An Ishmael of Syria

Asaad Almohammad

Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War

Marwan Hisham

The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria

Janine Di Giovanni

The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War

Ammar Habib

The Map of Salt and Stars

Zeyn Joukhadar

The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War

Delphine Minoui

The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Christy Lefteri

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

James Barr

Death Is Hard Work

Khaled Khalifa

The Refugees

Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria

Marwa al-Sabouni

Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising

Stephen Starr

Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

Francesca Borri

Crossing the Sea: With Syrians on the Exodus to Europe

Wolfgang Bauer

The Shattered Lens: A War Photographer's True Story of Captivity and Survival in Syria

Jonathan Alpeyrie

Flight From Syria: Refugee Stories

Hugh Eakin

Damascus Diaries: Life Under the Assads

Peter Clark

From Negative to Positive Stability: How the Syrian Refugee Crisis Can Improve Jordan's Outlook

Ben Connable

The Scent of Jasmine: Coming of Age in Jerusalem and Damascus

Anan Ameri

Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising

Jonathan Littell

Jihad Academy: The Rise of Islamic State

Nicolas Hénin

The ISIS Hostage: One Man's True Story of Thirteen Months in Captivity

Puk Damsgård

The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East

Harriet Allsopp

Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story

Hamid Sulaiman

Breaking Knees: Modern Arabic Short Stories from Syria

زكريا تامر

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS