Thea Storoy Elnan, for Aftenposten, November 23, 2015
Photo credit: Tor Stenersen
While schools and the subways are closed in Brussels and other European countries implement high terror alerts, Samar Yazbek disagrees with the way the Western media focusses on refugee flows.
– It is to ignore what is actually the root of the problem. The refugee crisis is a side effect, not the problem, she says.

Lars Flydal, for Vart Land, November 24th, 2015
Photo credit: Lars Flydal
…Samar Yazbek combines humanitarian work with writing. The meeting with the people in the homeland was strong. “I’ve talked to hundreds of people who told me about the horrors of war. The author and journalist in me could not refrain from writing down the strong stories. It was my job to be their memory. There was a whole stack of notebooks from a country in chaos. There was a strong psychological burden to go through the material – and it was …

Ulrika Mille, for SVT, November 11th, 2015
Samar Yazbek’s war story “The Crossing”, in a translation by Marie Anell, is written in a classical female war correspondent tradition, with forerunners such as Martha Gellhorn, Barbro Alving, Dorothy Parker and Marie Colvin – who was killed in a grenade attack in Homs, in Syria 2012.
Yazbek – who is a praised novelist and has written extensively television and film drama – skilfully depicts how people’s emotions are affected by war.
Comparable to Alexievich
In a sense, Yazbek is similar to the Belarusian Nobel prize Svetlana Alexievich, when she allows …

By Asne Gullikstad, for Dagsavisen, November 24th, 2015
Photo credit: Dagsavisen
Samar Yazbek fled first from the Assad regime, but went back to war. The second time, she fled from ISIS. Now terror struck the city she lives in, Paris.
“I opened the window ajar and let in a thin strip of light so the world would see layers of hell.”

“I opened the window ajar and let in a thin strip of light so the world would see layers of hell.” Samar Yazbek went back. She got into the war in Syria again, although …

Interview conducted by Maria Torens, for El Espanol, November 12th, 2015
Photo credit: El Espanol
While hundreds of thousands of Syrians are fleeing their country to seek asylum in neighboring countries and Europe, you went the opposite direction in 2012 and 2013. It sounds crazy.
The situation was not so complicated. DAESH [acronym in Arabic the self-styled Islamic State] had not yet entered Syria. I was determined to come back and settle in our country. It was the beginning of the drift toward tragedy. Now I have also gone into exile [in France].

Interview conducted by Arantza Furundarena, for El Diario Vasco, November 15th, 2015.
Photo credit: El Diario Vasco

– What are your dreams for you country?
– I dream of a a united, secular country, where religion is separate from politics.