![]() Apart from the introduction where she explains her project and how she went about it, Yazbek willingly pulls herself out of this book. The Crossing is undoubtedly both an important historical document and a work of literature. Yazbek’s book sheds a different, complex, light on the revolution, raising important questions pertaining to Syria’s social structure, and the role it played in the failure of the uprising. ![]() Yazbek's portraits of life in Syria are very real, her prose is luminous. how principled young men try to resist orders from their military superiors. Yazbek had received the PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage Award in 2012 for A Woman in the Crossfire, among other honors. Some of these stories are of hardship and brutality that is hard to bear, but she also gives testimony to touches of humanity along the way: how people live under the gaze of a sniper. The Crossing went on to win the Best Foreign Book award in France and was translated into 17 languages. From the first innocent demonstrations for democracy, through the beginnings of the Free Syrian Army, to the arrival of ISIS, she offers remarkable snapshots of soldiers, children, ordinary men and women simply trying to stay alive. ![]() In The Crossing, she testifies to the appalling reality that is Syria today. ![]() ![]() Since then, determined to bear witness to the suffering of her people, she bravely revisited her homeland by squeezing through a hole in the fence on the Turkish border. Samar Yazbek was well known in her native Syria as a writer and a journalist but, in 2011, she fell foul of the Assad regime and was forced to flee. Powerful insight into the effects of civil war on the Syrian people, by the award-winning Syrian journalist. ![]()
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