A powerful, definitive account of modern Syria and its fate. Few countries have had as complex a political history as Syria. Carved out of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, Syria was then brutally ruled by France. This French ‘mandate’ established new borders with neighboring countries that were just as provisional, in a process that tore apart families, trade networks, and political assumptions that were already ravaged by war.

Syria's subsequent history has been a series of attempts to understand its borders, including a failed effort in the late 1950s to unite with Egypt and several humiliations at the hands of Israel's armed forces. The civil war that erupted in 2011 plunged Syria into a series of disasters, including the devastating years of Islamic State control, ultimately leading to the return of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, which ended in 2024.

Daniel Neep’s remarkable book provides a gripping, insightful narrative of how Syrians have experienced these events, never losing sight of the lives of ordinary people or of Syria’s rich, complex, and diverse society, forcibly or voluntarily brought together in such a highly contested space.

Pages: 704, Dimensions: 16x16cm