The Syrian refugee crisis was the defining story of 2015. For exiled Syrian journalist Samar Yazbek, it was deeply personal and years in the making. In this compelling read, Yazbek weaves her experiences of the civil war with snapshots of the life cycle of the crisis – from early street demonstrations against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, to the multi-faceted conflict we face today.
At the heart of the book are Yazbek’s illegal crossings from Turkey into Syria, in which she attempts to uncover the everyday stories of people caught in the crossfire, as well as those fighting. “Later I told [people in Syria] about sneaking through the barbed wire to the other side. How we had crossed from being lost in one wilderness to being lost in another. It had been a moment of oscillation, of teetering on the line between exile and homeland,” she writes.
Yazbek’s beautiful storytelling, translated from Arabic into English by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp and Nashwa Gowanlock, combined with the personal stories she tells make this a highlight of recent releases on Syria.
