Awards

• Winner of English PEN Writers in Translation Award 2012
• Winner of English PEN Writers in Translation Award 2012.

Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9781908323125

Table of Contents

Reviews

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'She has the novelist's eye for telling detail... Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett 20120622 'Well before the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek was challenging the existing taboos of Syrian society in her novels. Since the early days of the revolution, she was involved in the pro-revolutionary movements on the ground, despite the daily threats she was submitted to. On four occasions, Yazbek was taken to detention centres in order to improve her writing as one regime officer once put it. A Woman in the Crossfire is her diary of the first four months of the revolution, in which she mixes first-person chronicles of her everyday life and exclusive testimonies of various eye-witnesses (doctors, officers, activists). Some of her chronicles were initially published in the Arab press as early as during spring 2011; hence Yazbek was one of the first voices to describe the reality of the Syrian uprising from the inside.' -- Isabelle Mayault 20120702 A Woman in the Crossfire is elevated beyond politics or reportage by Yazbek's intimate style and her willingness to reveal and involve herself in the book... The book is not about any particular party or movement, but about freely telling Syria's stories. It is a stand against all the forces silencing and misrepresenting Syrians... Many people, including Yazbek, risked their lives to bring us this book. A Woman in the Crossfire is thus an act of fierce resistance against the forces of silencing and simplification. It is anything but an effortless read, but it does wedge open a space wherein, for a moment, it feels possible to genuinely listen. -- Marcia Lynx Qualey 20120709 'Yazbek writes that intellectuals live in a frozen environment, the world has passed them by. And the mobilisation that has taken place in Syria, what spurred people into the street, was not the writers or the poets or the intellectuals. But they can still bear witness, and Samar Yazbek's document does that with courage, lyricism and mordant wit.' -- Max Dunbar The Siege Diaries: Samar Yazbek's Syria 20120718 'This is a handbook for nonviolent activists.' -- Mary Russell 20120728 'Thanks to her [Yazbek] skills as a fiction writer, her book is infused with a hauntingly poetic narrative style. Chilling, disturbing, but irresistibly compelling, A Woman in the Crossfire paints a picture of how, in four months, a peaceful uprising turned into a bloodbath.' -- India Stoughton 20120804 '[F]our new books confront the [Syrian] revolution head-on... Of the four writers, Samar Yazbek provides the most arresting, novelistic prose... In its uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital, Yazbek's book recalls the late Iraqi artist Nuha al Radi's Baghdad Diaries, a searing chronicle of the disintegration of Saddam's Iraq during the embargo of the Nineties.' -- Justin Marozzi 20120809 'Impassioned and harrowing memoir of the early revolt...' 20120829 'The heartbreaking diary of... a Syrian who risked her life to document the regime's brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators.' 20120907 'Yazbek's is not a crafted memoir but an immediate record of three months of fear, torture, intimidation and, eventually, flight from her home told through diaries that stop and start, sometimes repeat, and always offer another detail of popular will and regime cruelty. Its importance is in its existence, the effort of so many Syrians to share their stories and Yazbek's own courage and ability to record them. It is a hard, painful read, not only for what Yazbek witnesses and suffers but also for that of the other Syrians that she interviews. Their testimonies come through on the page as atrocities happen all around her.' 20120915 'It's heavy and horrible, like so much related to the war. But the book also reminds that Syria is -- was -- utterly beautiful. Yazbek takes us to its mountains. We can smell its lemon trees and ride along its country roads.' 20120916

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'As powerful a book as I've read in years' -- Francis Beckett Third Age Matters 20120615

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'She has the novelist's eye for telling detail... Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett 20120622 'Well before the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek was challenging the existing taboos of Syrian society in her novels. Since the early days of the revolution, she was involved in the pro-revolutionary movements on the ground, despite the daily threats she was submitted to. On four occasions, Yazbek was taken to detention centres in order to improve her writing as one regime officer once put it. A Woman in the Crossfire is her diary of the first four months of the revolution, in which she mixes first-person chronicles of her everyday life and exclusive testimonies of various eye-witnesses (doctors, officers, activists). Some of her chronicles were initially published in the Arab press as early as during spring 2011; hence Yazbek was one of the first voices to describe the reality of the Syrian uprising from the inside.' -- Isabelle Mayault 20120702 A Woman in the Crossfire is elevated beyond politics or reportage by Yazbek's intimate style and her willingness to reveal and involve herself in the book... The book is not about any particular party or movement, but about freely telling Syria's stories. It is a stand against all the forces silencing and misrepresenting Syrians... Many people, including Yazbek, risked their lives to bring us this book. A Woman in the Crossfire is thus an act of fierce resistance against the forces of silencing and simplification. It is anything but an effortless read, but it does wedge open a space wherein, for a moment, it feels possible to genuinely listen. -- Marcia Lynx Qualey 20120709

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'She has the novelist's eye for telling detail... Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett 20120622 'Well before the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek was challenging the existing taboos of Syrian society in her novels. Since the early days of the revolution, she was involved in the pro-revolutionary movements on the ground, despite the daily threats she was submitted to. On four occasions, Yazbek was taken to detention centres in order to improve her writing as one regime officer once put it. A Woman in the Crossfire is her diary of the first four months of the revolution, in which she mixes first-person chronicles of her everyday life and exclusive testimonies of various eye-witnesses (doctors, officers, activists). Some of her chronicles were initially published in the Arab press as early as during spring 2011; hence Yazbek was one of the first voices to describe the reality of the Syrian uprising from the inside.' -- Isabelle Mayault 20120702 A Woman in the Crossfire is elevated beyond politics or reportage by Yazbek's intimate style and her willingness to reveal and involve herself in the book... The book is not about any particular party or movement, but about freely telling Syria's stories. It is a stand against all the forces silencing and misrepresenting Syrians... Many people, including Yazbek, risked their lives to bring us this book. A Woman in the Crossfire is thus an act of fierce resistance against the forces of silencing and simplification. It is anything but an effortless read, but it does wedge open a space wherein, for a moment, it feels possible to genuinely listen. -- Marcia Lynx Qualey 20120709 'Yazbek writes that intellectuals live in a frozen environment, the world has passed them by. And the mobilisation that has taken place in Syria, what spurred people into the street, was not the writers or the poets or the intellectuals. But they can still bear witness, and Samar Yazbek's document does that with courage, lyricism and mordant wit.' -- Max Dunbar The Siege Diaries: Samar Yazbek's Syria 20120718 'This is a handbook for nonviolent activists.' -- Mary Russell 20120728 'Thanks to her [Yazbek] skills as a fiction writer, her book is infused with a hauntingly poetic narrative style. Chilling, disturbing, but irresistibly compelling, A Woman in the Crossfire paints a picture of how, in four months, a peaceful uprising turned into a bloodbath.' -- India Stoughton 20120804 '[F]our new books confront the [Syrian] revolution head-on... Of the four writers, Samar Yazbek provides the most arresting, novelistic prose... In its uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital, Yazbek's book recalls the late Iraqi artist Nuha al Radi's Baghdad Diaries, a searing chronicle of the disintegration of Saddam's Iraq during the embargo of the Nineties.' -- Justin Marozzi 20120809 'Impassioned and harrowing memoir of the early revolt...' 20120829 'The heartbreaking diary of... a Syrian who risked her life to document the regime's brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators.' 20120907

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'As powerful a book as I've read in years' -- Francis Beckett Third Age Matters 20120615 'The Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek recognises government thugs as soon as they get out of their car: Puffed-up muscles, tattoos, broad chests, an arrogant gaze, death. She has the novelist's eye for telling detail. Born in 1970 into an affluent and influential family, she comes from the same Alawi clan as the dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Her family connections kept her safe while she wrote novels that challenged taboos: Cinnamon, for example, compares a lesbian relationship favourably with an arranged marriage. But when the uprising began in March last year, and she started posting her opposition to the regime on Facebook and on rebel websites, no amount of establishment connections could keep her safe. Her parents disowned her, and a childhood schoolfriend texted her: Dear traitor even god's with the president and you're still lost. Her daughter, 17 when this book was written last year, begged her to stop putting them both in danger. Yazbek did try silence for a while, after a polite man came to see her. The most powerful people in the country are very angry with you, he said, and urged her, in her own interests, to write something supportive of the regime. She said: Tell them I'll be quiet. Won't that be enough? He replied: Just write something to get them off your back. By then she knew the nature of the regime and had seen the inside of Assad's torture chambers. She was arrested, blindfolded, pushed into an office; then her blindfold was removed, and a senior police officer hit her hard in the face, and jeered at her for falling down and being unable to get to her feet again. Well, well, what a hero, you went down with just one slap, he said. Isn't it awful when such an angelic face gets hit? Then they showed her what she was risking: the filthy cells where tortured young men lay in their own blood and excrement, waiting for the next beating, because they had been on a demonstration. She knew, too, why they set fire to the pharmacies: So that people won't be able to treat the wounded. She had learned the bitter lesson that sectarian spite in the opposition makes Assad's overthrow less likely and less hopeful - among the mountain of hate mail she received was one that began: Dear unveiled infidel, the Syrian revolution doesn't want an Alawite apostate like you in its ranks. She knew the cynical use the regime makes of Israel and the Palestinians; one of her interviewees told her how the Palestinian prisoners got the worst beatings, and how he was told the beating would stop if he would say that he was holding up a picture of Ariel Sharon during the demonstration. Yazbek had been to all the most dangerous places in Syria and recorded how the people were resisting, and what their rulers were doing to them. She saw things no one should ever see. Eventually she had to get her daughter out before the teenager was captured. They are both now exiles in Paris. But she took with her this detailed daily account of what she saw and heard between 25 March and 9 July last year. It cannot tell us what we ought to do about it. Even now that the demonstrations are bigger and the regime's reaction kills more people, the chances seem to be that without external military intervention, Assad will kill and torture enough of his own people to survive. Because his rule is not just cruel and brutal but incompetent and corrupt, the people will be kept in subservience, not just by fear, but by poverty too. The Arab spring may not reach the country that needs it most without external military aid. From President Eisenhower to President Bush, from Anthony Eden to Tony Blair, the Middle East has suffered from relentless western tinkering, generally for economic or geopolitical reasons. It is depressing that western governments seem much more likely to send their military might into Iran than into Syria. But it isn't Yazbek's task to try to make sense of western foreign policy, and she sensibly makes no attempt to do so. Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/22/woman-in-crossfire-samar-yazbek-review?newsfeed=true 20120622 Well before the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek was challenging the existing taboos of Syrian society in her novels. Since the early days of the revolution, she was involved in the pro-revolutionary movements on the ground, despite the daily threats she was submitted to. On four occasions, Yazbek was taken to detention centres in order to improve her writing as one regime officer once put it. A Woman in the Crossfire is her diary of the first four months of the revolution, in which she mixes first-person chronicles of her everyday life and exclusive testimonies of various eye-witnesses (doctors, officers, activists). Some of her chronicles were initially published in the Arab press as early as during spring 2011; hence Yazbek was one of the first voices to describe the reality of the Syrian uprising from the inside. -- Isabelle Mayault http://mashallahnews.com/?p=8672 20120702

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'She has the novelist's eye for telling detail... Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett 20120622 'Well before the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek was challenging the existing taboos of Syrian society in her novels. Since the early days of the revolution, she was involved in the pro-revolutionary movements on the ground, despite the daily threats she was submitted to. On four occasions, Yazbek was taken to detention centres in order to improve her writing as one regime officer once put it. A Woman in the Crossfire is her diary of the first four months of the revolution, in which she mixes first-person chronicles of her everyday life and exclusive testimonies of various eye-witnesses (doctors, officers, activists). Some of her chronicles were initially published in the Arab press as early as during spring 2011; hence Yazbek was one of the first voices to describe the reality of the Syrian uprising from the inside.' -- Isabelle Mayault 20120702 A Woman in the Crossfire is elevated beyond politics or reportage by Yazbek's intimate style and her willingness to reveal and involve herself in the book... The book is not about any particular party or movement, but about freely telling Syria's stories. It is a stand against all the forces silencing and misrepresenting Syrians... Many people, including Yazbek, risked their lives to bring us this book. A Woman in the Crossfire is thus an act of fierce resistance against the forces of silencing and simplification. It is anything but an effortless read, but it does wedge open a space wherein, for a moment, it feels possible to genuinely listen. -- Marcia Lynx Qualey 20120709 'Yazbek writes that intellectuals live in a frozen environment, the world has passed them by. And the mobilisation that has taken place in Syria, what spurred people into the street, was not the writers or the poets or the intellectuals. But they can still bear witness, and Samar Yazbek's document does that with courage, lyricism and mordant wit.' -- Max Dunbar The Siege Diaries: Samar Yazbek's Syria 20120718 'This is a handbook for nonviolent activists.' -- Mary Russell 20120728 'Thanks to her [Yazbek] skills as a fiction writer, her book is infused with a hauntingly poetic narrative style. Chilling, disturbing, but irresistibly compelling, A Woman in the Crossfire paints a picture of how, in four months, a peaceful uprising turned into a bloodbath.' -- India Stoughton 20120804 '[F]our new books confront the [Syrian] revolution head-on... Of the four writers, Samar Yazbek provides the most arresting, novelistic prose... In its uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital, Yazbek's book recalls the late Iraqi artist Nuha al Radi's Baghdad Diaries, a searing chronicle of the disintegration of Saddam's Iraq during the embargo of the Nineties.' -- Justin Marozzi 20120809 'Impassioned and harrowing memoir of the early revolt...' 20120829 'The heartbreaking diary of... a Syrian who risked her life to document the regime's brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators.' 20120907 'Yazbek's is not a crafted memoir but an immediate record of three months of fear, torture, intimidation and, eventually, flight from her home told through diaries that stop and start, sometimes repeat, and always offer another detail of popular will and regime cruelty. Its importance is in its existence, the effort of so many Syrians to share their stories and Yazbek's own courage and ability to record them. It is a hard, painful read, not only for what Yazbek witnesses and suffers but also for that of the other Syrians that she interviews. Their testimonies come through on the page as atrocities happen all around her.' 20120915 'It's heavy and horrible, like so much related to the war. But the book also reminds that Syria is -- was -- utterly beautiful. Yazbek takes us to its mountains. We can smell its lemon trees and ride along its country roads.' 20120916 'Samar Yazbek is excellent on the dress and behaviour of the demonstrations. Pro-Bashar demonstrations were supported by well-dressed young people who looked as if they were off to a party... [she] is eloquent on the dehumanising brutality of the security forces.' 20121029 'A powerful account conveying the idealism and fear that united diverse religious and ethnic groups in Syria to rise against their autocratic government, with the outcome still uncertain.' 'A unique window into the anguish of Syria: an intimate journey into the head and heart of a woman trying to maintain her sanity, humanity and, above all, love for her deeply wounded nation...' '[A]n unvarnished and sobering account of what she describes as the abuse and violence against the Syrian people.'

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'She has the novelist's eye for telling detail... Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett 20120622 'Well before the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek was challenging the existing taboos of Syrian society in her novels. Since the early days of the revolution, she was involved in the pro-revolutionary movements on the ground, despite the daily threats she was submitted to. On four occasions, Yazbek was taken to detention centres in order to improve her writing as one regime officer once put it. A Woman in the Crossfire is her diary of the first four months of the revolution, in which she mixes first-person chronicles of her everyday life and exclusive testimonies of various eye-witnesses (doctors, officers, activists). Some of her chronicles were initially published in the Arab press as early as during spring 2011; hence Yazbek was one of the first voices to describe the reality of the Syrian uprising from the inside.' -- Isabelle Mayault 20120702 A Woman in the Crossfire is elevated beyond politics or reportage by Yazbek's intimate style and her willingness to reveal and involve herself in the book... The book is not about any particular party or movement, but about freely telling Syria's stories. It is a stand against all the forces silencing and misrepresenting Syrians... Many people, including Yazbek, risked their lives to bring us this book. A Woman in the Crossfire is thus an act of fierce resistance against the forces of silencing and simplification. It is anything but an effortless read, but it does wedge open a space wherein, for a moment, it feels possible to genuinely listen. -- Marcia Lynx Qualey 20120709 'Yazbek writes that intellectuals live in a frozen environment, the world has passed them by. And the mobilisation that has taken place in Syria, what spurred people into the street, was not the writers or the poets or the intellectuals. But they can still bear witness, and Samar Yazbek's document does that with courage, lyricism and mordant wit.' -- Max Dunbar The Siege Diaries: Samar Yazbek's Syria 20120718 'This is a handbook for nonviolent activists.' -- Mary Russell 20120728 'Thanks to her [Yazbek] skills as a fiction writer, her book is infused with a hauntingly poetic narrative style. Chilling, disturbing, but irresistibly compelling, A Woman in the Crossfire paints a picture of how, in four months, a peaceful uprising turned into a bloodbath.' -- India Stoughton 20120804 '[F]our new books confront the [Syrian] revolution head-on... Of the four writers, Samar Yazbek provides the most arresting, novelistic prose... In its uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital, Yazbek's book recalls the late Iraqi artist Nuha al Radi's Baghdad Diaries, a searing chronicle of the disintegration of Saddam's Iraq during the embargo of the Nineties.' -- Justin Marozzi 20120809

'An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.' 20120415 'As powerful a book as I've read in years' -- Francis Beckett Third Age Matters 20120615 'The Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek recognises government thugs as soon as they get out of their car: Puffed-up muscles, tattoos, broad chests, an arrogant gaze, death. She has the novelist's eye for telling detail. Born in 1970 into an affluent and influential family, she comes from the same Alawi clan as the dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Her family connections kept her safe while she wrote novels that challenged taboos: Cinnamon, for example, compares a lesbian relationship favourably with an arranged marriage. But when the uprising began in March last year, and she started posting her opposition to the regime on Facebook and on rebel websites, no amount of establishment connections could keep her safe. Her parents disowned her, and a childhood schoolfriend texted her: Dear traitor even god's with the president and you're still lost. Her daughter, 17 when this book was written last year, begged her to stop putting them both in danger. Yazbek did try silence for a while, after a polite man came to see her. The most powerful people in the country are very angry with you, he said, and urged her, in her own interests, to write something supportive of the regime. She said: Tell them I'll be quiet. Won't that be enough? He replied: Just write something to get them off your back. By then she knew the nature of the regime and had seen the inside of Assad's torture chambers. She was arrested, blindfolded, pushed into an office; then her blindfold was removed, and a senior police officer hit her hard in the face, and jeered at her for falling down and being unable to get to her feet again. Well, well, what a hero, you went down with just one slap, he said. Isn't it awful when such an angelic face gets hit? Then they showed her what she was risking: the filthy cells where tortured young men lay in their own blood and excrement, waiting for the next beating, because they had been on a demonstration. She knew, too, why they set fire to the pharmacies: So that people won't be able to treat the wounded. She had learned the bitter lesson that sectarian spite in the opposition makes Assad's overthrow less likely and less hopeful - among the mountain of hate mail she received was one that began: Dear unveiled infidel, the Syrian revolution doesn't want an Alawite apostate like you in its ranks. She knew the cynical use the regime makes of Israel and the Palestinians; one of her interviewees told her how the Palestinian prisoners got the worst beatings, and how he was told the beating would stop if he would say that he was holding up a picture of Ariel Sharon during the demonstration. Yazbek had been to all the most dangerous places in Syria and recorded how the people were resisting, and what their rulers were doing to them. She saw things no one should ever see. Eventually she had to get her daughter out before the teenager was captured. They are both now exiles in Paris. But she took with her this detailed daily account of what she saw and heard between 25 March and 9 July last year. It cannot tell us what we ought to do about it. Even now that the demonstrations are bigger and the regime's reaction kills more people, the chances seem to be that without external military intervention, Assad will kill and torture enough of his own people to survive. Because his rule is not just cruel and brutal but incompetent and corrupt, the people will be kept in subservience, not just by fear, but by poverty too. The Arab spring may not reach the country that needs it most without external military aid. From President Eisenhower to President Bush, from Anthony Eden to Tony Blair, the Middle East has suffered from relentless western tinkering, generally for economic or geopolitical reasons. It is depressing that western governments seem much more likely to send their military might into Iran than into Syria. But it isn't Yazbek's task to try to make sense of western foreign policy, and she sensibly makes no attempt to do so. Hers is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.' -- Francis Beckett http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/22/woman-in-crossfire-samar-yazbek-review?newsfeed=true 20120622

Author Information

Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist, born in Jableh in 1970. She is the author of several works of fiction. An outspoken critic of the Assad regime, but also of what she identifies as erroneous perceptions of ideological conformity within the Syrian Alawite community, Yazbek has been deeply involved in the Syrian uprising since it broke out in March, 2011. Fearing for the life of her daughter she was forced to flee her country and now lives in hiding. Yazbek was awarded the PEN/Pinter International Writer of Courage Award in 2012, awarded to an author of outstanding literary merit who casts an 'unflinching' eye on the world. She is also the author of the novel Cinnamon (2012).

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