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Født i helvedes forgård
Fødselslæge Maria Milland beretter om sin ni måneder lange udstationering i Syrien, hvor hun arbejdede i al-Hol-lejren. Midt i en grum virkelighed med vold og mord var hun med til at bringe børn til verden – børn, der fødes til et liv uden fremtidsudsigter.
Bogen giver et unikt og ærligt indblik i lejrens barske leve- og sundhedsforhold og i udfordringerne, der er forbundet med at udføre humanitært arbejde under særdeles anspændte og uforudsigelige forhold. Den er et velfunderet vidneudsagn fra helvedes forgård, hvor forfatteren blev strakt til det yderste både professionelt og personligt.
Bogen giver et unikt og ærligt indblik i lejrens barske leve- og sundhedsforhold og i udfordringerne, der er forbundet med at udføre humanitært arbejde under særdeles anspændte og uforudsigelige forhold. Den er et velfunderet vidneudsagn fra helvedes forgård, hvor forfatteren blev strakt til det yderste både professionelt og personligt.
192 pages, Paperback
Published January 17, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 8, 2025
I wasn’t expecting to get pulled into this story as much as I did!
OB-GYN Maria Milland recounts nine grueling months at the al-Hol camp in northeast Syria.
This camp is the largest one in Syria. It’s located in the NE corner, not far from the Turkish border and only 15km from the Iraqi border. It was established in 1991 as a refugee camp for fleeing Iraqis during the Gulf War and originally housed 15,000 refugees.
Three decades later, it has swollen to 57,000 people and has become a detention camp surrounded by fences and towers with armed guards. It holds mostly Syrians and Iraqis; 90% are women and children, most with links to ISIS fighters.
Can you imagine having a baby who begins life with detention, has no prospect of when, if ever, they’d ever be allowed to leave a barbed wire camp or see outside a city of tents?
Can you imagine being given an Oxytocin drip to speed up your delivery because the medical team has to leave the encampment by 4pm? Because it’s too dangerous for you and the team to be outside walking in the dark in the tent city?
Can you imagine your nine-year-old having her womb removed because a bullet had pierced her pelvis?
Can you imagine going to the supermarket on your day off and seeing various weapons for sale?
I can’t imagine ANY of it. I’m heartbroken that so many live in so much uncertainty, not having any prospect that things will get better or that things could be different.
We have so much to be thankful for…sometimes it’s good to be reminded of the blessings we take for granted. Yes, this was a necessary read during this festive season. Life isn’t holly and bells the world over. This reads like a conversation over coffee with a friend. It’s presented without much emotion or politics, just the bare facts of the experience. I’d read another book written by this author about any of the other 10 assignments she’s worked.
I was gifted this copy and was under no obligation to provide a review.
OB-GYN Maria Milland recounts nine grueling months at the al-Hol camp in northeast Syria.
This camp is the largest one in Syria. It’s located in the NE corner, not far from the Turkish border and only 15km from the Iraqi border. It was established in 1991 as a refugee camp for fleeing Iraqis during the Gulf War and originally housed 15,000 refugees.
Three decades later, it has swollen to 57,000 people and has become a detention camp surrounded by fences and towers with armed guards. It holds mostly Syrians and Iraqis; 90% are women and children, most with links to ISIS fighters.
Can you imagine having a baby who begins life with detention, has no prospect of when, if ever, they’d ever be allowed to leave a barbed wire camp or see outside a city of tents?
Can you imagine being given an Oxytocin drip to speed up your delivery because the medical team has to leave the encampment by 4pm? Because it’s too dangerous for you and the team to be outside walking in the dark in the tent city?
Can you imagine your nine-year-old having her womb removed because a bullet had pierced her pelvis?
Can you imagine going to the supermarket on your day off and seeing various weapons for sale?
I can’t imagine ANY of it. I’m heartbroken that so many live in so much uncertainty, not having any prospect that things will get better or that things could be different.
We have so much to be thankful for…sometimes it’s good to be reminded of the blessings we take for granted. Yes, this was a necessary read during this festive season. Life isn’t holly and bells the world over. This reads like a conversation over coffee with a friend. It’s presented without much emotion or politics, just the bare facts of the experience. I’d read another book written by this author about any of the other 10 assignments she’s worked.
I was gifted this copy and was under no obligation to provide a review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A fascinating account by a Danish ob-gyn of the 9 months she spent working for the International Red Cross/Red Crescent in the al-Hol camp in Syria.
The tone is very clinical and journalistic. At first, I was a little frustrated by the author’s apparent detachment, but as the book unfolded I realized that this made sense, coming from a physician who has been trained to collect and process information in this manner. As I read, I came to see this tone as a real asset. Milland was there in 2022, not long after the Islamic State lost its last territory, and many of the inhabitants of the camp had connections to ISIS fighters. There seems to be a dearth of concrete information about the camp—who was there, why they were there, and what was happening inside the camp. Milland refers constantly to the stringent security restrictions imposed on her and her team. She herself could not get a comprehensive look into the circumstances within the camp, but her style lets the reader look over her shoulder and get some of the same glimpses she got into life there. These glimpses add up to a meaningful sense of what life was like for the women and children in the camp, and of the difficulties of trying to provide good ob/gyn care for the thousands of women who live there. We also see the toll that the accumulating stress takes on Milland herself.
There were several abrupt jumps in the narrative thread that I found disruptive. The opening episode, for instance, just hangs over the whole first half, before we get more insight into how it relates to Milland’s clinical practice, but as a whole the book is coherent, and the writing flows. According to the author’s notes at the end, she did her own translation, which is impressive.
Definitely worth reading. This is not a book to turn to if you want an overt, critical engagement with the geopolitical context. Milland is not interested in explaining that here, nor in critiquing the decisions of various nations that led to this situation. I don’t think it’s because she doesn’t have thoughts on the geopolitics; it’s rather that that is outside the scope of her book. This book focuses on what it is like to exist, even for a short time, in such an unstable and unsafe space.
My thanks to Steerforth & Pushkin and NetGalley for a digital ARC.
The tone is very clinical and journalistic. At first, I was a little frustrated by the author’s apparent detachment, but as the book unfolded I realized that this made sense, coming from a physician who has been trained to collect and process information in this manner. As I read, I came to see this tone as a real asset. Milland was there in 2022, not long after the Islamic State lost its last territory, and many of the inhabitants of the camp had connections to ISIS fighters. There seems to be a dearth of concrete information about the camp—who was there, why they were there, and what was happening inside the camp. Milland refers constantly to the stringent security restrictions imposed on her and her team. She herself could not get a comprehensive look into the circumstances within the camp, but her style lets the reader look over her shoulder and get some of the same glimpses she got into life there. These glimpses add up to a meaningful sense of what life was like for the women and children in the camp, and of the difficulties of trying to provide good ob/gyn care for the thousands of women who live there. We also see the toll that the accumulating stress takes on Milland herself.
There were several abrupt jumps in the narrative thread that I found disruptive. The opening episode, for instance, just hangs over the whole first half, before we get more insight into how it relates to Milland’s clinical practice, but as a whole the book is coherent, and the writing flows. According to the author’s notes at the end, she did her own translation, which is impressive.
Definitely worth reading. This is not a book to turn to if you want an overt, critical engagement with the geopolitical context. Milland is not interested in explaining that here, nor in critiquing the decisions of various nations that led to this situation. I don’t think it’s because she doesn’t have thoughts on the geopolitics; it’s rather that that is outside the scope of her book. This book focuses on what it is like to exist, even for a short time, in such an unstable and unsafe space.
My thanks to Steerforth & Pushkin and NetGalley for a digital ARC.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book is based on Maria Milland’s firsthand experiences during her short stint as an OB/GYN in al-Hol camp, a large displacement camp in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border. Originally set up in 1991 and later expanded, its population surged after ISIS’s defeat in 2019 when families of fighters, mostly women and children, were moved there. At its peak, it held tens of thousands, and even today around 25,000–40,000 people remain, living in harsh conditions with limited access to healthcare, education, and basic services.
Through Maria’s account, we get a deeply human look at the challenges the women and children face: the lack of safety (so much so that people have to return to their tents by a certain time every day), the scarcity of proper medical care, and the absence of education around childbirth and postpartum health. I was especially struck by how some women keep giving birth to the point of physical harm, often because their husbands want many children. It made me sad to think about how easily their own wellbeing seems to be erased in the process.
One detail that stayed with me was the idea that women were expected to be married before they could be pregnant and seen by an OB/GYN. It made me wonder about those who became pregnant outside of that expectation — what kind of treatment did they receive? How much more vulnerable were they?
I felt the most for the children born into the camp. They have no choice and no easy way out. It’s chilling to know such a place still exists today. When Maria returned home, people told her she had helped bring the next generation of ISIS fighters into the world. While that comment is cruel, it also highlights a painful reality: children raised in al-Hol are at a higher risk of radicalisation simply because of the environment they’re growing up in. That thought alone broke my heart.
This may not be the most comprehensive account of al-Hol, but it offers powerful, personal insight into a reality most of us will never witness. It’s unsettling, emotional, and necessary reading if you want to understand the human cost behind headlines about war, displacement, and extremism.
Through Maria’s account, we get a deeply human look at the challenges the women and children face: the lack of safety (so much so that people have to return to their tents by a certain time every day), the scarcity of proper medical care, and the absence of education around childbirth and postpartum health. I was especially struck by how some women keep giving birth to the point of physical harm, often because their husbands want many children. It made me sad to think about how easily their own wellbeing seems to be erased in the process.
One detail that stayed with me was the idea that women were expected to be married before they could be pregnant and seen by an OB/GYN. It made me wonder about those who became pregnant outside of that expectation — what kind of treatment did they receive? How much more vulnerable were they?
I felt the most for the children born into the camp. They have no choice and no easy way out. It’s chilling to know such a place still exists today. When Maria returned home, people told her she had helped bring the next generation of ISIS fighters into the world. While that comment is cruel, it also highlights a painful reality: children raised in al-Hol are at a higher risk of radicalisation simply because of the environment they’re growing up in. That thought alone broke my heart.
This may not be the most comprehensive account of al-Hol, but it offers powerful, personal insight into a reality most of us will never witness. It’s unsettling, emotional, and necessary reading if you want to understand the human cost behind headlines about war, displacement, and extremism.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I simply can't say that I enjoyed this book, because you can't enjoy anything written about hell itself - the title is spot on.
This book was an eye opener. Or rather a brick in the face.
When you hear or think about war, you can comprehend and understand the complexity of it, you empathise and sympathise with the horrific nature of it, you feel sorry for the victims, but the you switch channels and move on with your cushioned Western life. Reading this book will not allow you that. You are there. You see it. You smell it. You touch it. The mass of nameless people becomes faces as you get closer. It becomes names. Families. Stories. Lives that were ruined before they even had the chance to really start. These are people who were born at the wrong place at the wrong time, had no control over what was happening to them and fell victim to global power politics, to religion, to geopolitical tension. Amd then you realise that they are just like you and me, and yet, they couldn't be more different.
To my taste, there was a little to much medical detail but it is understandable, considering that the author is a medical doctor after all.
Please read this book. You will not have a good time, but your underatanding about the world we live in, about people, about politics will have a massive shake-up.
Thank you for the author and NetGalley for the ARC.
This book was an eye opener. Or rather a brick in the face.
When you hear or think about war, you can comprehend and understand the complexity of it, you empathise and sympathise with the horrific nature of it, you feel sorry for the victims, but the you switch channels and move on with your cushioned Western life. Reading this book will not allow you that. You are there. You see it. You smell it. You touch it. The mass of nameless people becomes faces as you get closer. It becomes names. Families. Stories. Lives that were ruined before they even had the chance to really start. These are people who were born at the wrong place at the wrong time, had no control over what was happening to them and fell victim to global power politics, to religion, to geopolitical tension. Amd then you realise that they are just like you and me, and yet, they couldn't be more different.
To my taste, there was a little to much medical detail but it is understandable, considering that the author is a medical doctor after all.
Please read this book. You will not have a good time, but your underatanding about the world we live in, about people, about politics will have a massive shake-up.
Thank you for the author and NetGalley for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Emotional
Dr Maria Milland has been deployed to the Al-Hol camp in Syria as an obstetrician and gynaecologist as part of the Red Cross relief effort and this is her story
This book was an emotional rollercoaster as a reader, it takes you through so many difficult times and you really connect with Maria, what she is going through and what some of the women in the camp are subjected to
I will admit that there were times that I struggled with time jumps but I think that’s mostly because the review copy I have doesn’t really include chapter splits and that it would read and flow much better in a normal copy of the book
Most of the time, camps in war torn areas are just things that you seen on the news and this is very different to that and exposes the reader to at least some of the realities of day to day life
Because of Maria’s medical specialty, there is a lot of focus on women’s health and births, including some of the darker sides which I did struggle with a bit as a result of the emotions coming through on the page
I would recommend this book to those who are interested in a medical account of part of a humanitarian mission unlike anything else you will read
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley who granted me access to this book
Dr Maria Milland has been deployed to the Al-Hol camp in Syria as an obstetrician and gynaecologist as part of the Red Cross relief effort and this is her story
This book was an emotional rollercoaster as a reader, it takes you through so many difficult times and you really connect with Maria, what she is going through and what some of the women in the camp are subjected to
I will admit that there were times that I struggled with time jumps but I think that’s mostly because the review copy I have doesn’t really include chapter splits and that it would read and flow much better in a normal copy of the book
Most of the time, camps in war torn areas are just things that you seen on the news and this is very different to that and exposes the reader to at least some of the realities of day to day life
Because of Maria’s medical specialty, there is a lot of focus on women’s health and births, including some of the darker sides which I did struggle with a bit as a result of the emotions coming through on the page
I would recommend this book to those who are interested in a medical account of part of a humanitarian mission unlike anything else you will read
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley who granted me access to this book
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy.
This was a difficult and deeply reflective read for me. I don’t know as much about Syria’s history as I would like, and this book made me more aware of that gap in my understanding. Much of what I’ve previously encountered has been through social media, which feels limited and insufficient compared to engaging with a full narrative like this.
Reading this forced me to slow down and sit with stories that are often overlooked or simplified. It’s not an easy book to read, but it’s one that invites reflection, empathy, and a deeper awareness of lives shaped by circumstances far beyond their control. This is a book that lingers, asking the reader to look more closely and listen more carefully.
This was a difficult and deeply reflective read for me. I don’t know as much about Syria’s history as I would like, and this book made me more aware of that gap in my understanding. Much of what I’ve previously encountered has been through social media, which feels limited and insufficient compared to engaging with a full narrative like this.
Reading this forced me to slow down and sit with stories that are often overlooked or simplified. It’s not an easy book to read, but it’s one that invites reflection, empathy, and a deeper awareness of lives shaped by circumstances far beyond their control. This is a book that lingers, asking the reader to look more closely and listen more carefully.
January 2, 2026
Fantastisk
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews