A collection of articles about Syria.
3 stars
This book was actually hard for me to read, mostly in terms of the writing style. There were a lot of places that needed an editor (spelling, duplicated words, weird spacing, inconsistent spellings, flow of language), but that didn't detract from the message or the interest.
It also repeats quite frequently, but I think that's largely because this is a chronological compilation of translated articles; it felt like I was being reminded of the same few things (meanings of words, structures of power, who people were) multiple times. In a lot of these instances, I started skimming because otherwise I felt like the information was too repetitive. A better use of space would be to have footnotes and a glossary for words like 'shabiha' instead of constant parenthetical notes about it that break engagement and forces the audience to stop, reread the sentence without the parenthetical note, and then continue. …
This book was actually hard for me to read, mostly in terms of the writing style. There were a lot of places that needed an editor (spelling, duplicated words, weird spacing, inconsistent spellings, flow of language), but that didn't detract from the message or the interest.
It also repeats quite frequently, but I think that's largely because this is a chronological compilation of translated articles; it felt like I was being reminded of the same few things (meanings of words, structures of power, who people were) multiple times. In a lot of these instances, I started skimming because otherwise I felt like the information was too repetitive. A better use of space would be to have footnotes and a glossary for words like 'shabiha' instead of constant parenthetical notes about it that break engagement and forces the audience to stop, reread the sentence without the parenthetical note, and then continue. It was really frustrating.
Overwhelmingly, I think I would've liked these articles more as... articles rather than as a compilation because of how similar they could be. The information is something that we need to know more about because this story isn't really breaking into the world headlines from the perspectives of people who live in Syria. We get a lot of talking heads who are "Middle East experts" or "Middle East scholars" with no lived experience or "foreign relations experts" or "diplomatic experts" who haven't really interacted with Syria. In that way, this book is pretty refreshing.
