Published by L’Express. September 26 2018.
She understands French, but prefers to speak in Arabic. For fear of losing her tongue: “It would be a double exile”, explains Samar Yazbek with a serious smile, refugee in France since the summer of 2011. For having participated in the revolt against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, this secular intellectual and democratic has become a prey for extremists of all stripes. “And I would feel even more guilty,” she continues.

Published by Le Monde, September 27, 2018. By Eglal Errera.
Also featured in Le Monde des Livres.
Among all the works that come to us from Syria or from the diaspora, this novel has a unique timbre that mixes absolute realism and wonder.

Venturing into what is most intimate, Yazbek returns to the novel, her original vocation (Cinnamon, Buchet-Chastel, 2013). Amongst all the works that come to us from Syria or from the diaspora, this novel has a unique timbre that mixes absolute realism to wonder. Rima, the narrator of La Marcheuse (The blue pen), is silent. She hears the sound of her …

Published by Livres Hebdo, June 30, 2018

“Syrian writer Samar Yazbek imagines a very metaphorical female protagonist who discovers war and the virtues of literature.”

The Blue Pen, in French “La marcheuse”, will be published end of August 2019.

By Florence Noiville, for Le Monde, publisher on December 21st, 2017

Lebanese novelist Jabbour Douaihy offers a fake thriller, but a real comedy, tribute to Arabic writing and printing.
Here is a Lebanese novel that is far from the stereotypes of Europeans on Middle Eastern literature. There are no reminiscences of war, no religious questions, no community issues. It is about Beirut, the history of which is told through that of a printing press, starting 1914. But it is also about the laughable posture of the contemporary writer.
From the first lines, the humor of Jabbour Douaihy prevails.

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.