Marianne Payot, for L’Express
Published on March 5, 2017
Sinan Antoon brushes off the superb portrait of a man carried away by the maelstrom of the Middle East and raises the veil over Baghdad.
It is the story of a broken destiny, that of a young man who wanted to become a sculptor and who ends up washing the dead. Like his father and all his ancestors before him. A craft that knows no respite in contemporary worn torn Iraq.

Youssef Ait Akdim, for Jeune Afrique, July 2013.
Photo credit: Bruno Levy
Dans Souriez, vous êtes en Tunisie !, Habib Selmi dresse un portrait acide de son pays. Écrit avant la révolution, ce roman prémonitoire sonde une société en plein bouleversement.

There are 14 titles on the shortlist, and the winner will be announced on October 10th. The Prix Médicis aims at giving recognition to authors whose fame does not match their talent. The prize was awarded to authors such as Jean Echenoz, Philippe Sollers, Sorj Chalandon or Marie Darieussecq in the past.
Earlier in the summer, Samar Yazbek was given the title of”Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”, or “Knight of literature”, by the French ministry of culture. This title is a sign of recognition of the services Yazbek …

Jean Hatzfeld for Le Monde des Livres, April 15  2016
Les Portes du néant, à la frontière turque, s’ouvrent une première fois sur la route qui mène à la région d’Idlib, dans le nord-ouest de la Syrie. Samar Yazbek les franchit en août 2012, en se faufilant dans un trou creusé sous des barbelés. Une voiture l’attend, qui traverse la nuit sur un fond sonore de bombardements, avec à l’intérieur Maysara et Mohammed, deux frères d’armes rebelles : ses anges gardiens.

Gregoire Lemenager, for Le Nouvel Observateur, March 20th 2016
(…) She who until now scanned the gray areas of the good Damascene society in daring novels ( “Cinnamon” tells the homosexual relationship of a bourgeois with her housekeeper), then published “In the crossfire” (Buchet-Chastel, 2012) and collects literary awards that applaud her courage.

By Jean-Louis Le Touzet, for Liberation, March 20, 2016
Photo credit: Mathieu Zazzo, Liberation
 
Men make war. But a woman, blonde, cat-eyed, 46-year old Syrian of high education was needed to paint Syria’s death. No other brush was ever dipped in as many tears to tell the intoxication of brutality in a country under the yoke of a double punishment: that of a totally deranged regime and that of the unbearable cruelty of fanatical Islamists . To be clear, about Syria, we read everything and read nothing. Rarely such a plunging view of demolition was ever published. This is what this …