The Economist, 11 July 2015
FEW dispute that the war in Syria is a tragedy. But the question of what people are fighting about has been bitterly contested since the crisis broke out in 2011. Among many narratives, some see it as a battle of jihadist rebels, including Islamic State, against the nominally secular Assad regime. Others view it as a regional sectarian war between Muslims, fuelled by the proxy conflict between Iran’s Shia rulers on one side and on the other the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

“Troops snatched young boys from their mothers’ arms and ‘tore them apart with bullets’: New book reveals the harrowing fate of Syrians trapped living under President Assad and the butchers of ISIS”
By Imogene Calderwood, for MailOnline, July 8th, 2015
Photo credit: Samar Yazbek
The grim reality of life in Syria is told through the eyes of the down-trodden and oppressed refugees living there in a harrowing new book.
Syrian journalist Samar Yazbek has told how people are trapped between ISIS barbarians and president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime live in constant fear of beheadings …

This is an excerpt of an article by Laure Stephan, for le Monde des Livres, Published June 18th, 2015
They often talk about their books in France, whether written in French or translated from the Arabic. Some have studied in France or lived here during their years of exile in the time of war (1975-1990). But their moorings are in Beirut, or in any case not far from the city on this side of the Mediterranean and its magical light. Beirut is the place of childhood memories or years of youth, long-term stays or torn …

Margarette Driscoll, for Sunday Times, published June 28, 2015
Photo credit: Ulf Andersen, for the Sunday Times
[ Below a few excerpts ]
The battle for Tal Abyad, a Syrian border town, was playing out as I began The Crossing. The nightly news showed weather-beaten, exhausted refugees flooding to the Turkish border, only to be turned back at the last moment by black-clad Isis fighters blocking their way to freedom. Their despair and distress were visible across the barbed wire fence.
It was somewhere along that border, one night in August 2012, that Samar …

This excerpt was published by The Guardian on June 28, 2015.
Photo credit: The Guardian, Sedat Suna, EPA
The barbed wire lacerated my back. I was trembling uncontrollably. After long hours spent waiting for nightfall, to avoid attracting the attention of Turkish soldiers, I finally raised my head and gazed up at the distant sky, darkening to black. Under the wire fence marking the line of the border a tiny burrow had been dug out, just big enough for one person. My feet sank into the soil and the barbs mauled my back …

This piece is by Andrew Hussey, for The Observer, published June 28th 2015. Read the full article here.
Photo credit: Ed Alcock for The Observer.
As she sits at a cafe table in the 7th arrondissement – elegant and intense, waving around a Gitane for emphasis – it’s hard to imagine a more Parisian figure than the writer Samar Yazbek. Except that she is speaking to me mostly in her native Syrian Arabic (we use an interpreter). And for all her wit and charm, the stories she is telling me are horrifying. …