Yazbek’s is not a crafted memoir but an immediate record of three months of fear, torture, intimidation and, eventually, flight from her home told through diaries that stop and start, sometimes repeat, and always offer another detail of popular will and regime cruelty. Its importance is in its existence, the effort of so many Syrians to share their stories and Yazbek’s own courage and ability to record them. It is a hard, painful read, not only for what Yazbek witnesses and suffers but also for that of the other Syrians that she interviews. Their testimonies come through on the page as atrocities happen all around her.

IT was not yet 5 on Tuesday morning. I was lying on one side of the bed and the two little girls I was watching were on the other. None of us had slept a wink. Snipers’ gunfire rang out from time to time; bombs were crashing all around us. The girls’ frightened mother entered the room. “The bombing is getting worse,” she said.

We ran out, heading downstairs. Women and children and some men had gathered in the shelter. The children were now capable of distinguishing between the sound of bombs and gunfire, between distant and nearby shelling, and they could discern the direction from which it was all coming

Many have criticized the “hasty” Arabic literature that has emerged in the last 16 months, blossoming in both bookstores and online during the ongoing Arab revolutions… And yet there is something about the intersection of literature and real life that compels readers to keep searching for books that resonate with, and expand beautifully on, the current moment — without cheapening either the literature or the moment.

Syrian novelist and TV host Samar Yazbek’s “A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution” is one of these rare books.

You often mention in the diary how blurry the frontiers between reality and fiction are; how reality often looks like a screenplay, a ferocious fiction. Would you say that this type of political environment makes fiction irrelevant?

The political environment didn’t necessarily make fiction irrelevant. What I was trying to say is that the horror I saw surpassed any kind of fiction imaginable.

Samar Yazbek’s book just came out in English, at Haus publishing. The book’s translation was supported by the Sharjah Book Fair.
Below are excerpts of the review by Francis Beckett for The Guardian, June 22, 2012.

“Mostly, I have shared in some people’s pain. Is there some point to secretly, in my own home, sharing in people’s pain? I don’t know. But once you’ve started, and you’ve found that you care about these people — these characters, these people — it’s also difficult to stop”