Amazon.com: No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (9780393609493): Rania Abouzeid: Books

Amazon.com: No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (9780393609493): Rania Abouzeid: Books

This astonishing book by the prize-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid tells the tragedy of the Syrian War through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country.

Extending back to the first demonstrations of 2011, No Turning Back dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict. As protests ignited in Daraa, some citizens were brimming with a sense of possibility. A privileged young man named Suleiman posted videos of the protests online, full of hope for justice and democracy. A father of two named Mohammad, secretly radicalized and newly released from prison, saw a darker opportunity in the unrest. When violence broke out in Homs, a poet named Abu Azzam became an unlikely commander in a Free Syrian Army militia. The regime’s brutal response disrupted a family in Idlib province, where a nine-year-old girl opened the door to a military raid that caused her father to flee. As the bombings increased and roads grew more dangerous, these people’s lives intertwined in unexpected ways.

Rania Abouzeid brings readers deep inside Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of ISIS. Based on more than five years of clandestine reporting on the front lines, No Turning Back is an utterly engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters that shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century’s greatest humanitarian disasters.
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Editorial Reviews

Review


“Page after page of extraordinary reporting and many flashes of exquisitely descriptive prose. ... [U]nforgettable … Abouzeid’s remarkable journalistic and literary work has given us, at last, a book worthy of the enormous tragedy that is Syria.”
- Christopher Dickey, New York Times Book Review

“[An] unparalleled account of the Syrian uprising, drawing on six years of immersive reporting.”
- The New Yorker

“Excellent. ... [P]robably the most perceptive journalistic account of the war so far, highlighting the individual stories while never losing sight of the broader situation and history. ... Abouzeid’s understated bravery and ability to merge into the background speak to the power of immersive eyewitness reporting, foregrounding the experience of the people she meets and writing with modesty.”
- Lindsey Hilsum, New York Review of Books

“Eloquent and devastating … Abouzeid relates the drama of this chaos in gripping prose.”
- The Christian Science Monitor

“The civil war in Syria is the most catastrophic event of our time, and the most dimly understood. Most journalists won’t go near it. Rania Abouzeid has produced a work of stunning reportage from the very heart of the conflict, daring to go to the most dangerous places in order to get the story. The result is a sensational book that allows us a deeper, and more humane, understanding of this terrible war; it’s a credit to Abouzeid’s bravery and fortitude.”
- Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Forever War

“No Turning Back stands far above anything I have read about the Syrian war. Rania Abouzeid has produced a masterpiece, weaving together the lives of protesters, victims, and remorseless killers at the center of this century’s most appalling human tragedy. No one else, to my knowledge, has reported this story so bravely or narrated it with such intimacy and power.”
- Robert F. Worth, author of A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS

“Rania Abouzeid has written an intimate portrait of a chaotic war. Her profiles of Syrians caught up in the savage unraveling of the country heightens the tragedy, a lens missing from the news stories. This book is a must read for anyone who has watched the seemingly incomprehensible horror and for policy makers who must try to stop the violence.”
- Deb Amos, author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East

“Widely recognized as the bravest of reporters…Abouzeid writes with great fluidity and authority about the most important foreign policy and moral crisis of our era, embedding with the men, women and children whose lives were torn apart by the Syrian civil war…No Turning Back works both on the level of deeply reported personal narratives of a tragedy that continues to unspool and also as a major work of history.”
- Peter Bergen, author of United States of Jihad and Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden

“In No Turning Back, Rania Abouzeid brings you up close and personal to the men and women who led the uprising in Syria. Abouzeid understands these people so well and her writing is so vivid that they practically jump off the page with all their dreams, ideals, and misplaced optimism. After No Turning Back, you won’t be able to hear anything more about Syria without feeling that you too know the people who are living (and dying) through it.”
- Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood

“A fabulous and illuminating account of the Syrian conflict told by a world-class journalist at the height of her powers. This is about real people, their real stories and how they web together to tell the wider story of a nation in crisis. A rich and rewarding book that informs, excites and inspires. A truly first-class piece of high-end reportage.”
- Tim Butcher, author of The Trigger, Blood River, and Chasing the Devil
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About the Author


Rania Abouzeid has won the Michael Kelly Award and George Polk Award for foreign reporting, among many other prizes for international journalism. She has written for The New Yorker, Time, Foreign Affairs, Politico, the Guardian, and the Los Angeles Times. A former New America fellow, she lives in Beirut, Lebanon.


Product details

Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (March 13, 2018)
Language: English


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Top customer reviews

Andy of Minnesota
5.0 out of 5 starsCOMPELLING NARRATIVE HUMANIZING THE SYRIAN CONFLICTMarch 30, 2018
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase

Rania Abouzeid’s account of the conflict in Syria is a remarkably well-written history that brings a compelling human feel to the absolute hell that has been Syria since the 2011 uprising. Tracing the conflict through the actions and perspectives of several diverse participants, Abouzeid’s non-fiction narrative provides the reader with a highly credible view of this complex and convoluted war.

With differing allegiances and distinct motivations, the characters are followed as the uprising begins with non-violent demonstrations, through the development of a full-scale war between the Assad regime and the not well-united opposition. At every point the story is very well written in a highly accessible style. This is certainly a hard story, but a relatively easy read for a wide range of audiences, those who have followed Syria news carefully over the years, and those who have only passing knowledge of the events.

The author brings us into the mindsets of a number of key characters, including those who are driven by democratic secular ideals and those who are moved by strict religious ideology, those who have served in the Syrian Army, and those who have suffered in its prisons. We share the mindset of leaders as well as that of ordinary participants: children, students, politicians, grandmothers and soldiers.

Abouzeid does not attempt to provide a neutral academic history of the Syrian war from all sides. As a journalist viewed by the Assad regime as an enemy, the author had limited access to regime-held territory. She chooses to air, very proficiently, the spectrum of the anti-regime opposition. Specifically the reader sees the democratic secular side, the Free Syrian Army as well as the various shades of the Islamic opposition, including al-Qaeda. These are the realities of Syria and the author is fiercely loyal to telling the story as it exists in reality.

The conflict in Syria is grim, now very grim. It is difficult to foresee a near-term solution to the conflict bringing both peace and a modicum of the democracy which motivated the uprising against tyranny in 2011. The complete story remains untold, and future developments will likely include surprises. Abouzeid’s narrative provides a very human basis for keeping hope alive for the Syrian people. This book is a “must-read” for all seeking to understand Syria and to be prepared for what lies ahead.
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Tanager
5.0 out of 5 starsTaking on the daunting task of putting human faces on a conflict most of us probably do not remotely understandMarch 24, 2018
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase

This wasn't an easy read...but it was a rewarding one. The author chronicles the Syrian civil war not as a series of events but as the intertwined journeys (both figurative and literal) of multiple individuals, participants willing and unwilling. She spends enough time with each of her key subjects that none is given short shrift, and none so outweighs the others that it becomes his/her story alone. I'd like to pretend that, upon reading this book, I suddenly have some real understanding of the Syrian civil war, but what it's really done is show me how little I really still know, how much there is yet to know. The approach of following individuals, some of which are sympathetic, some much less so, some perhaps not at all, rather than simply chronicling events like a textbook, brings home the actual impact of the war in much more affecting and moving ways, I think. Highly, highly recommended.
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Christopher Leonard
5.0 out of 5 starsA compelling read and deeply reported bookMarch 21, 2018
Format: Hardcover

It is no secret that Rania Abouzeid is one of the bravest reporters working today, but this bravery has its downside. Too much attention has been paid to the fact that Abouzeid risked her life, repeatedly, to write "No Turning Back," and not enough attention has been paid to what a wonderful book she produced. "No Turning Back," is a masterwork of narrative journalism, an insightful, gripping read that is also studded with hard-earned and deeply revealing scoops.
The story centers on four primary character who reveal different facets of the war: A nine-year-old girl caught in the crossfire, an Islamic militant who takes up arms against the Assad regime, a secular rebel who does the same and, finally, a once-wealthy Syrian man who helps broadcast images and news of the war to a global audience.
These characters are utterly fascinating on their own, but the truly breathtaking nature of this book is how the stories interact with one another. Mohammad, the Islamic militant, is one of the most compelling figures whom I have read about in years. In the beginning of the conflict, he helps arm protestors with the chillingly canny insight that once they have taken up arms, they will be permanently entangled with a life of militancy. His hunger for violence is deeply disturbing, but it is given context just one chapter later when another character in the book is tortured brutally by regime soldiers.
In this way, with interwoven narratives, "No Turning Back" provides an intimate, painful and revealing history of the largest humanitarian crisis of our time. And it also provides important news. Amazingly, Abouzeid is able to trace the lineage of Al Qaeda's branch in Syria to a single meeting, which she documents. She also provides deep and detailed reporting on how weapons have flowed into the conflict and how outside powers have manipulated the conflict to achieve their own objectives.
This vital and compelling book is nearly impossible to put down. Abouzeid is a very brave reporter, but also a terrific writer.
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Tamam - for Justice
5.0 out of 5 starsThe only message is that whatever you think about Syria, it just isn't that simple.March 16, 2018
Format: Hardcover

I started reading this 3 minutes after it was released, and though I have had to skim ahead for now it really is a towering work of scrupulous objectivity that spares no-one in painting a detailed picture of the tragic reality of Syria and the human beings swept up in the maelstrom.

The only message is that whatever you think about Syria, it just isn't that simple.

The Assad family had a reign of terror for 40 years. The oppression and fear reached saturation point. The Syrian people rose up to demand the human rights the rest of us take for granted. Then it went downhill from there.
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