By Charles Jaigu, for Le Figaro, March 13, 2016
(…) One must read this remarkable narrative to get rid of the indifference to the crackle of images, and of testimonies heard on the fly. It is not enough to know that terrible events are taking place in the world. A story longer than 140 signs needs to give them form and color.
(…)
Samar Yazbek’s story  is valuable as a literary testimony.  It is also valuable as a geopolitical analysis. It goes from the fog of war, the confusion of fighting, and gradually goes back to the general idea: quite simply, Bachar El Assad is the cause
behind all the evil… To those who… consider that the priority is primarily the fight …

Interview by Christian Makarian for l’Express, Published March 9, 2016
Below are excerpts translated into English.
In a strikingly truthful book, The Crossing (Stock), Samar Yazbek tells the daily atrocities of the war in Syria. She also explores the irreversible mechanisms of ultra-violence…
How do you define yourself facing the dislocation of Syria?
I am a Syrian writer, nothing else. I am a secular, journalist and activist involved with human rights – including the rights of women. I am neither Alawite or Sunni, or Christian, I refuse to be defined by my confession. I am …

The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing. It is awarded each year for the book which come closest to George Orwell’s ambition to ‘make political writing into an art’.
Samar Yazbek is on the Orwell’s long list with her book on Syria, The Crossing. The winner will be announced end of May.

Yazbek was featured on La grande librairie last Thursday, guest of Francois Busnel,  along with Amin Maalouf and Erik Orsenna, both of which thought the book was important.

Carla Kweifio-Okai, about The Crossing, for The Guardian, December 2015
The Syrian refugee crisis was the defining story of 2015. For exiled Syrian journalist Samar Yazbek, it was deeply personal and years in the making. In this compelling read, Yazbek weaves her experiences of the civil war with snapshots of the life cycle of the crisis – from early street demonstrations against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, to the multi-faceted conflict we face today.

Elise Karlsson, for Aftonbladet, November 13th, 2015
Even after a country has ceased to exist, people continue to live in it. When the snipers monitor the streets, neighbors open their houses to allow passage, through this alternative road. At night, every night, when the bombs fall, you run you down in the basement with the kids and talk to each other while the paint falls from the ceiling in white flakes.
When the bombs fall so often that it no longer makes sense to be above ground, people move down below the surface. Ancient Roman tombs are opened …