Jean Hatzfeld for Le Monde des Livres, April 15  2016
Les Portes du néant, à la frontière turque, s’ouvrent une première fois sur la route qui mène à la région d’Idlib, dans le nord-ouest de la Syrie. Samar Yazbek les franchit en août 2012, en se faufilant dans un trou creusé sous des barbelés. Une voiture l’attend, qui traverse la nuit sur un fond sonore de bombardements, avec à l’intérieur Maysara et Mohammed, deux frères d’armes rebelles : ses anges gardiens.

Gregoire Lemenager, for Le Nouvel Observateur, March 20th 2016
(…) She who until now scanned the gray areas of the good Damascene society in daring novels ( “Cinnamon” tells the homosexual relationship of a bourgeois with her housekeeper), then published “In the crossfire” (Buchet-Chastel, 2012) and collects literary awards that applaud her courage.

By Jean-Louis Le Touzet, for Liberation, March 20, 2016
Photo credit: Mathieu Zazzo, Liberation
 
Men make war. But a woman, blonde, cat-eyed, 46-year old Syrian of high education was needed to paint Syria’s death. No other brush was ever dipped in as many tears to tell the intoxication of brutality in a country under the yoke of a double punishment: that of a totally deranged regime and that of the unbearable cruelty of fanatical Islamists . To be clear, about Syria, we read everything and read nothing. Rarely such a plunging view of demolition was ever published. This is what this …

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.