The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria

In The Morning They Came for Us, Janine di Giovanni presents the ethnic, religious and political history of Syria, a complicated country carved from Middle East border negotiations between British and French diplomats, with its widespread Sunni majority, the Shia minority, the northern Kurds, the Armenian/Greek Christians, the Yazidi mountain nomads and, above all, the iron-fisted Assad family's 50-year dictatorship. Di Giovanni (Ghosts by Daylight; Madness Visible) is a seasoned foreign correspondent with experience in warzones including Sarajevo, Kosovo, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. She knows first-hand that war is not so much about history and religion, but about the people caught in the middle of it.

The Morning They Came for Us is about Syrians such as Nada, Hussein and Maryam--people from places like Damascus, Homs and Aleppo who suffered under the Assad government and lost family and friends to the incessant bombings and assaults from the many sides pulling their country apart. In informal interviews, di Giovanni elicits their stories of rape, beatings and repeated torture. Some were student opposition activists, some were highly educated, multilingual elite who were "bi-national," having "a second passport, a way out," and some were apolitical working people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Morning They Came for Us tells the story of Syrians who have discovered that "war starts with a jolt: one day you are busy with dentist appointments or arranging ballet lessons.... ATMs work and mobile phones function. Then, suddenly, everything stops"--except for the brutal and seemingly endless war that di Giovanni chronicles so effectively. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

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