Interview conducted by Catalina Guerrero, for La Vanguardia, November 13th, 2015
Photo credit: Getty images
In Syria “we have to face two monsters: the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the ‘Daesh’ (Arabic acronym for the terrorist group Islamic State),” said writer and activist Samar Yazbek, who recounted in “The Crossing” the “atrocities” she has witnessed.
Her intention with this book, Yazbek explains, was “to set the record straight” and give a “voice” to the victims of  an “international war governed by the interests of the great powers” which has reduced her country to “rubbles”…

By Guido Caldion, for Il Manifesto, published on November 15h, 2015
Hoda Barakat is among the most famous and brilliant Lebanese authors. She has lived in Paris for the past thirty years, at Place de la République, the epicentre of the terrorist attack that hit the French capital. Deeply knowledgeable about the works of Marcel Proust and Robert Musil, but also about the Arab poets of the ninth and tenth centuries, Barakat investigates the symbols and history of the Middle Eastern countries, returning to the crisis in that part of the world…
Born in 1952 in Beirut to a Christian …

By Robin Yassin Kassan, for The Daily Beast, November 4th, 2015
Photo credit: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters
The Syrians Who Refused to Give Up
Syrian horrors and hopes almost defy description. Samar Yazbek’s passion and literary skill somehow manage to do them justice.

Samar Yazbek’s searing new book about her Syrian homeland is a testament to the indomitable spirit of her countrymen in their struggle against the Assad regime.
Samar Yazbek’s shocking, searing, and beautiful new book, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria, describes three visits to Idlib province in northern Syria, …

An interview conducted by William Irigoyen, for La Cite, published in November 2015.
A few excerpts below in the French original, and in English.
Photo credit: Samih Zaatari, La Cite.
Thus summed up in its broad lines, the story would present only little interest, if it did not give a new opportunity to the author to dissect this society he knows so well, and the flaws of which he loves depicting: corruption (“At the time of the elections, the rich were buying people’s votes; people wondered how they could have amassed such fortunes”); money that allows everything.
Book after …

Mou’in Al Bayari, for Al Araby, October 16th, 2015
The Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich, journalist, meets with many people who witnessed the tragedy she writes about about. She gathers their testimonies, and creates out of an open collage a narrative. The result is not a novel in the usual sense of the term, nor is it a reportage or an investigation. It is a meeting of literature with journalism. It invoques reality, as it is, but with an elevated writing style, rich with words expressing both the intimate and the apparent.

An interview by Ruth Reif, for Der Standaart, published on October 2, 2015

“My soul remains in Syria»
A year after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, Samar Yazbek was forced to flee. Her name was blacklisted. Since then she has returned several times secretly to her home to interview people.