The aunts are gloriously vivacious and nuanced creations, from Maryam, at war with her own “filthy and rebellious” body, to Marwa, a Juliet figure, chained to her bed to prevent her marrying an officer of the other sect. As party spies multiply, a geography teacher has her clothes torn off for failing a pupil from a Mukhabarat family. In the siege of Aleppo, a fugitive throws himself into a red-hot bakery furnace rather than risk torture. A secret police chief modelled on the president’s brother is a chilling cameo.

The 42-year-old writer is a very unlikely revolutionary, certainly an unexpected presence among the Free Syrian Army.

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.

“No one in the village wants to really give him any information. The survivors speak of generalities or give him conflicting versions of what happened. “People talk, just as they please,” says Kamleh, Elias’ mother, “you will not obtain anything for them, they will lie to you. Anyone who has lost a relative up there, tries to make a hero out of him… And who was himself up there and has flown the coop, does not know what to say, they rather remain silent.””

Although June rain has a few lengths, it is an exciting, successful literary novel. In some ways it’s a coming of age novel from the Middle East, one that leaves no doubt about the central role of family militant organizations in the Lebanese civil war.

Khaled Khalifa’s In praise of hatred is now out in English!