S
amar Yazbek is now one of the most prominent figures in Arabic literature. Her body of work, which began at the start of this century in Bashar al-Assad's Syria, gained renewed momentum with the popular uprising against that hereditary dictatorship. In A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, Yazbek documented the early months of a Syrian revolution that aspired to be peaceful and inclusive. Her book The Crossing: My journey to the shattered heart of Syria offered a clear-eyed reflection on the revolution's derailment, as the intensification of militia violence served both the regime and jihadists. Yet, Yazbek did not abandon fiction, publishing two remarkable novels: one set in an insurgent suburb of Damascus (Planet of Clay), and another in the Alawite mountains (Where the Wind Calls Home), a location that was mistakenly considered a stronghold of the dictatorship.
Yazbek also painted a poignant tableau of Syria's tragedy in 19 Women: Syrian women tell their stories, which intertwines the fates of these women. She employs the same method, combining mastery and humility, in A Memory of Annihilation, which presents 25 testimonies from the horror of Gaza. These accounts were gathered between March and June 2024 at hospitals in Qatar, where these wounded individuals, aged 13 to 65, had been evacuated.
