Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria

by Loubna Mrie

An unprecedented and unforgettable first-person account of resistance and transformation from a young Syrian woman—raised with deep family ties to the authoritarian government—who risked everything to rebel against the regime

Loubna Mrie was raised a staunch Syrian Alawite—a member of the same insular, historically oppressed Muslim sect as then-President Hafez al-Assad. Her mother’s father helped plan the coup that saw Hafez seize power in 1970 and bring the Alawites out of hiding and into a position of total control; her father was intimately involved in Hafez’s government as an enforcer and assassin. In her household and community at large, the president was seen less as a political figure and more as an object of near-religious devotion.

When the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011, and popular discontent with the rule of Hafez’s son, Bashar al-Assad, triggered large-scale protests and prodemocracy rallies across the country, Loubna sought out an antigovernment demonstration out of curiosity and found herself forever changed by what she genuine passion for a better future for all Syrians being brutally repressed by government forces. When she returned to her grandparents’ home in Damascus, her jeans spattered with fellow protesters’ blood, her grandmother called her a traitor. Unable to ignore her political awakening, Loubna plunged ahead into a life of activism—in opposition to both the regime and her abusive father—with unimaginable consequences.  

An account that includes her mother’s murder as a direct consequence of her resistance activities and the kidnapping and execution of her American boyfriend, Peter Kassig, at the hands of the Islamic State, Defiance is a searing, ground-level view of surviving the unendurable at the flash point of one of the most visible and least understood wars in recent history, from a perspective that is rarely considered, let alone heard—that of a Syrian Alawite woman.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Middle East, Politics, Biography Memoir, Biography

432 pages, Hardcover

Published February 24, 2026

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United)]

Allow me to be ridiculously pedantic for a second. (If you just said, "Again?" then we are in a fight.) Memoirs worry me when I start them. I am always concerned that the author will make themselves either the eternal victim, or worse, the unsullied hero of their own story. If you call yourself the hero, then you are no hero. It's a rule I have. So, with that annoying little requirement in my head, I opened Defiance.

Loubna Mrie is no hero. At least, according to her. I think she defines herself as a survivor. I, however, consider her a hero.

Mrie grew up in relative privilege in Syria as part of the ruling class. She also grew up in abject terror as her father is, well, let's just say not a nice person. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I won't comment further on him. I want the reader to experience this story the way I did because this book is one of the most powerful I have read.

What makes this narrative so exceptional is the utter emotional abandon in which Mrie writes. She is a reluctant revolutionary. In fact, she is a naive young girl who gets dragged into the resistance because she's just naturally inquisitive (and maybe a bit rebellious in the way most teenagers are). This is not a memoir of a budding standard bearer with nerves of steel. She is a flawed, scared woman who is trying to find a life of her own on her own terms. Her innermost destructive thoughts are never hidden. She makes decisions that, while understandable, will make the reader wince. She hides from consequences of her own making or completely out of her control and drowns her trauma in drink. And yet, she persists. Mrie will continually question her choices but consistently chooses to move forward to help save her homeland.

The book is a true page-turner. It begins almost like a normal coming-of-age story only to morph into a litany of near-death experiences, loss, and despair. While that all sounds like a very challenging read, I should also point out that Mrie is also very funny. Yeah, I didn't expect to find that in here either, but somehow Mrie's sardonic humor will come through to relieve the pressure. It's the type of nonfiction book which reminds me why I don't read fiction all that much. I have everything I need right here, and it's all true. Mrie went through hell, got her bruises, made her mistakes, and then was willing to show the world the unvarnished truth in order to shed light on the homeland she loves. That's where the heroism is.

(This book was provided as a review copy by the author and Viking Books.)

[Reader]

I just finished Loubna’s memoir and it’s a must read!
Loubna is Journalist from Jableh my hometown off of the Syrian coast
She has always been a figure that I would discretely try to know more about whenever I leave the safe walls of my politically active household
In Jableh, every word was carefully spoken as a pro-regime city with assadist warlords running every inch inside it

I’ve never cried, laughed and took breaks so much for a single book
Recognizing names of her relatives from my school, names of mutual friends of hers & my sisters that I grew up watching and thought so much of

Loubna has a very sick dark (concerning) funny humor I think some might enjoy lol
I laughed a lot, a LOTTTT but it’s not for the weak hahahhahaha

Sharing cries and laughter with my sister while we reminisce memories and faces as Loubna’s squeaky but cute voice narrates in audible was a very warm and memorable experience
I wish every person gets to read and hear a memoir or any peace of writing that connects them and revives the feelings i had the chance to get revived with this book

This memoir is truly a gentle gift for me and more for Syrians her age who lived through the uprising and the losses in the last 15 years

And Sarah Jessica Parker loves it apparently so

[Ivana]

I don't know how to review this book, it has absorbed me and I feel something I can only describe as deep grief. I grew up in the Balkans and lived through our civil war. So when I read Loubna's memoir, I found parts of our stories merging.
It is a memoir of one of the bloodiest civil wars, but it is also a story of pervasive child abuse and abuse toward women, in a system underpinned by toxic patriarchy and misogyny, so prevalent, so normalized by the culture so as to appear almost biologically factual. I know that system, lived that system, and the rage I felt reading through these pages was incandescent. For it is only in a system like this that murderous systems like Assad's and ISIS's can sprout-they are interdependent, intertwined, they cannot exist without the other. Loubna's courage, defiance, persistence in the face of that system is incredible, beyond courageous...it is legendary. I hope she has disentangled the poisonous vines of the system that made her believe she is to blame for what has happened to her and to her family. I hope she is tending to her wounds and her grief, that she finds peace and heals this devastating trauma. I hope that for all of us victims of various Assads, for they're all the same in the misery and destruction they sow. Different flags, same criminals. May they all burn in hell.

[John Caleb Grenn]

This is a masterpiece. Full stop. Memoir only does so much for me in telling a story, pulling me into a life—it has to brake the chains of the form somehow to get my attention. Along the likes of other works like “The Yellow House” by Sarah Broom, “Heavy” by Kiese Laymon, “Sigh, Gone” by Phuc Tran, Loubna Mrie has done that—surpassed the form and created an absolutely heartwrenching book about her life growing up in and later being exiled from Syria during the last 35 years of turmoil.

I don’t want to use this review to talk about Syria—we should all be talking about Syria all the time. I want to use this space to talk about how masterful this book is. Mrie is a rare author who is actually capable of bottling rage, bitterness, sorrow, horror and spelling them out on the page. She clearly has a natural ability to tell a story—the natural use of tone, voice, tense choice, … it’s masterful English prose that has that magical quality of pulling you in close and letting you in on secrets.

I cannot imagine the hearteending work the actual writing of these pages must have taken: recounting the losses over and over. What makes the telling of her story so downright incredible, though, is how risky the entire writing of it is. This is REAL writing, REAL journalism, alive on the page and published amid the activism and the action.

I owe Loubna a lot for sending this book my way. I also owe Anand Gopal something, too. I read his book recently, published a mixed review about it—that led to Loubna Mrie messaging me and getting her story into my hands. I’d have missed this otherwise. I also would have not been nearly as ready for the reading of it as I feel I was after reading Days of Love and Rage—a powerful work of journalism despite my inability to maintain focus at length.

If you read a memoir this decade, let Defiance be the one you read. Forget Lena Dunham. If you want to read about authoritarian rule and religious nationalism, let Defiance be that book. I’ve come away changed by it.

[Basil]

If one were searching for a hagiographic account of a Syrian woman, reluctant revolutionary, and exiled journalist, they ought to look as far away as possible from "Defiance." Loubna Mrie matches all the above descriptors, yet she refuses any heroism, continuously unspooling the most wince-worthy of her thoughts and actions, and therefore allowing herself to appear on the page as broken and fraught with contradiction as the country she belongs to and the revolution she participated in. She may resent me for calling her writing brave, but her refusal of such a characterization would only further attest to my point.

"Defiance" opens with a scene that demonstrates Loubna's alienation from the communal rituals she grew up with. Simultaneously, the first few pages immediately establish my own distance from the writer’s background. Despite sharing the same language and national identity as Loubna, my upbringing as a Damascene Sunni Syrian and hers as an Alawite woman from Jableh render us dissimilar enough to dwell on the differences. More consequentially, the historical politicization of our identities set me and Loubna up to likely belong to opposite political camps of the Syrian revolution and war. In the initial section of the book, our differences were the main factors behind why I found "Defiance" compelling. Loubna’s account was the first in-depth narrative I’d personally read of an Alawite woman’s upbringing and coming-of-age, let alone revolutionary participation, and she writes about her personal triumphs and devastations with startling clarity.

In many ways, Loubna is an unlikely revolutionary. Her father was an assassin for Hafez Al-Assad, and her grandfather on her mother’s side was a diplomat for Hafez as well. She was fairly well-off and did not grow up in an especially politicized environment. Like most Syrians, she was also spoon-fed a narrative that painted the dictator and his son in heroic terms. As an Alawite Syrian however, there were additional valences to the benevolent dictator narrative surrounding Hafez Al-Assad: his rise spelled a collective triumphant uplift of Alawites from communal oppression stretching back to the 16th century Ottoman Empire. Per the narrative Loubna grew up with, any threat to the Assadist dictatorship would existentially threaten the fragile safety of the her own community as an Alawite. A reader would naturally wonder how it was that Loubna came to be so politicized, and came to carry costs too devastating to bear due to her unlikely participation in a revolution aiming to topple Assad’s Syria.

As she recounts it, Loubna curiously and clumsily stumbled into a shocking reality during her college years. After finding her way to a protest in Damascus’s suburbs, she would begin to learn that Hafez Al-Assad’s so-called “uplift” of Alawite Syrians was not an innocent matter: it involved mass murder, systematic imprisonment, and torture until death in complete secrecy within vast prison networks. The lattermost would later become the horrific fate of Loubna’s mother. It was singularly the most devastating cost Loubna paid for her participation in the revolution, and Loubna's grief would later be compounded by losing a dizzying amount of the loved ones to the regime and to ISIS over her years as a revolutionary and journalist. As a consequence, Loubna’s almost accidental revolt eventually became as defiant of the Assadist dictatorship as it was a revolution against the culprit behind her mother’s murder: her own father, another murderous patriarch with decades’ worth of blood on his hands. Her rebellion was also a rejection of the communal narrative she grew up with—a disruption to her sense of self that carried griefs too vast to reckon with through any sort of writing.

I was of course aware of the Alawite community’s complex relationship with the regime. Many Alawites besides Loubna participated in the revolution, and they did so partly out of solidarity with other Syrians, and partly because of the fact that many of them were also oppressed victims of the regime’s violence. Many of them also fiercely and violently defended the regime of course. Yet Loubna’s scathingly honest personal account allowed me to appreciate much more deeply how siloed from each other Syrians of different backgrounds are, even as they took on the mantle of a cross-sectarian revolution aimed at liberating all Syrians. For one, I inherited a very different historical narrative that brought home the stakes of the Syrian revolution as a young teenager immediately. My family belongs to a class of Syrians much more likely to be oppositional to Assad, both because of the regime’s brutal collective punishment of Syrians, and because of classed sectarian resentment. In that sense, my belief in the Syrian revolution was not at all a familial revolt. It was the most acceptable and justified position to hold, which is all the more reason why readers who share my background ought to engage with “Defiance.” It brings out aspects of the Syrian Revolution and Syrian society many of us could easily remain blind to.

Though appreciating our experiential and communal differences were critical to my reading experience of "Defiance," I do not wish to reduce Loubna’s craft, or my relationship with the text, to questions surrounding identity and sect. As Loubna herself writes, “Although I am glad my work is being recognized, I often wish that people would know me as anything besides the Alawite journalist who lost her mother” (p.280). Respecting Loubna’s wishes is not too difficult, since her writing has impacted me in many more ways than serving as a window into her identitarian struggles. Loubna’s prose is matter-of-fact, curious, and sardonic in its explorations of rebellion and tragedy. It is equal parts blunt and vivid, bereft of tasteless flowery romance yet too invitingly vulnerable to be properly labeled abrasive or misanthropic. Her style refuses any form of self-flattery, insisting on self-interrogation without slipping into self-flagellating narcissism. In doing so, she also rejects any suffocating self-seriousness that would appear in the hands of a lesser writer, periodically injecting her writing with bitingly dark humor.

Yet above all else, "Defiance" is compelling because it is palpably honest. I cannot help but particularly dwell on how she characterizes the most violent man in her life. It is not at all easy, nor expected, for a woman in her position to recall her criminal father’s rare tender moments and portray them more generously in writing than she believes he deserves. Many other such examples of quotidian courage within the book are the mark of a writer who has done incredibly difficult internal work to arrive at many complicated conclusions about herself, and about the revolution she gave so much of her life for. I can’t help but admire it.

Even as I revere Loubna’s ability to interrogate herself and the violent narratives forced upon her, I do not wish the consequences of Loubna’s defiance upon my worst enemy. She acutely experienced the debilitating guilt and pain of exile that most revolutionary Syrians are deeply familiar with, all while grieving her loved ones, anxiously following the news, and navigating linguistic and cultural barriers in Turkey and the US. She knew personally, and to varying degrees of intimacy, many highly publicized martyrs of the Syrian revolution including Naji Al-Jerf, Peter Kassig, and Bassel Shehadeh among others. She witnessed shocking scenes of brutal violence and narrowly dodged death. To the same extent that her story is unique, partly because of her background and partly because of the trajectory she spelled out for herself, it is also a mirror for the endless ocean of pain most Syrians continue to hold within themselves. There can be no romanticization of such pitch black grief.

Still, Loubna has shown through her writing a remarkable ability to work through personal tragedy and to reject easy narratives of victimization and heroism, against all odds. Her work remains unfinished and imperfect—and I do wish the book’s final chapter recounting her exile in the US could have dug more deeply through the years of despair between 2019 and 2024. But nonetheless, there is only so much emotional excavation one writer can make in one book. Loubna’s story is not an easy one, but I find certain aspects of it aspirational. I believe the work of rejecting easier narratives of exclusive communal belonging, hero worship, and ethno/racial/religious/gendered antagonism must be the responsibility of all of us, Syrian or not. Her book stands as an imperfect testimony that, while holding uncomfortable moral positions may be extraordinarily costly, it is not only possible. It is right, and it is honest.

[Robin]

What an incredible story Loubna has to tell. Courageous, fragile, damaged, raw and intelligently told. I loved this book

[Mahsa Shahshahani]

Most people expect to read about a hero when they pick up a memoir of a dictatorship prisoner or exile. But people who have lived under authoritarian regimes with horrifying dungeons know better than anyone else that you don’t need to be a hero to become a victim of the regime. It only takes one wrong move, wrong according to the regime you live under, for your whole life and world to come to an end.

Loubna is no hero, nor does she ever claim anywhere in her book to be one. She is simply telling her own story, her own life, from the very unique perspective of a privileged girl, lucky or unlucky enough to be born on the good side of the dictator at the time. She is Alawi, and her whole family had benefited from being Alawite, the same sect as the Assad family. Her father was a hired assassin for the Assad family, tasked with getting rid of prominent people who dared to oppose the Assad regime. Her uncles had a monopoly over major Syrian industries, or oversaw the intelligence service in their part of the country. She was born and raised, by all means, with privileges that no other groups in Syria enjoyed. Christians and Druze had normal lives, but none had the blessing of the government. And Kurds and Sunnis were under so much oppression at the same time.

You might expect an Alawite girl who washes her hands of all these privileges and decides to fight for justice to be a hero. Someone who had seen poverty, understood the depth of oppression, and came to the realization that change was needed. Well, not exactly. Loubna was not an informed or well read girl. She did not have a deep understanding of politics or of what was happening in her country. However, she had one priceless thing: a very pure soul. The kind of soul that, when she saw protesters getting killed right in front of her eyes, could never shut her eyes again and look the other way.

She didn’t know what she was fighting for when she started down this path, which eventually ended in her exile. But she knew something was horribly wrong in her country when people could just be shot in the head for peacefully protesting, or when people could be shot while burying a villager who had been killed just the day before in a protest. She knew something was terribly wrong when her friend was scared of travelling to the city where his university was located because the name of his own village, written on his ID card, was a dangerous one, a Kurdish one. She knew something was wrong and she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about it.

The problem was that she didn’t understand the potential consequences of standing against it. She had been raised privileged, and she simply couldn’t believe that these things could happen to her. She couldn’t believe that her own people, Alawites, people who had lived with her on the same street and had sat on the same benches at school, could turn against her to the extent that they became capable of shooting her. Or her mom.

And this is one of the things I loved most about her story. She is very honest with herself and with us. There were parts of the book that, had she wanted to portray herself as the hero, she could have easily deleted. But she didn’t. She gave us the opportunity to see her for the deeply troubled girl she was, rather than turning herself into some kind of perfect revolutionary heroine.

A girl fathered by a monster but mothered by a loving, caring woman who sacrificed everything to give her daughters a life she couldn’t have. Her mother sacrificed everything to shelter them from their own father while, at the same time, keeping them under the protection of that same father because she knew. She knew what evil things this man was capable of. She sacrificed her own life to make sure her daughters would break the vicious circle and get freed from the prison of their deeply misogynistic culture, with all the atrocities woven into it. She gave them the wings and asked them to fly. And they did.

But it ended very painfully for her. She was killed by her own husband after Loubna sought refuge in Turkey. She couldn’t see this coming because she was privileged and sheltered. And Loubna would always blame herself for this horrible loss.

To me, her mother is the hero of this story. I am so proud of her and so grateful for her. May God bless her soul.

But this story is not really a story of war or revolution. It is a very personal telling of the story of a girl who had to flee from her own father, her own wicked community, and fight for freedom and change. She was very brave at times, and she did things that I could never imagine doing. At one point, she even sat with an ISIS fighter in the same room because she wanted to seek news about her American boyfriend, who had been kidnapped by ISIS. My whole body was shaking while reading that account. And I burst into laughter when the ISIS member, who had two wives, one in Morocco and one in Syria, asked her to marry him.

She was brave, but I don’t think she was brave because she knew the potential consequences of what she was doing. And I love that because that is the truth. People who are caught in a revolution, in an uprising, in a noble cause for freedom, are not born differently. They get into it as an inevitable act of humanity, one way or another. They hear something from a family member that makes them furious. They see something that they cannot unsee. Something happens to someone they know. And suddenly they find themselves in the middle of something much bigger than they ever expected.

They are not cut from a different cloth. They are us.

And that, we Iranians, know and understand very well.

This was a very interesting yet painful account for me to read. It is the story of hope for change and revolution, of fighting for justice and a better future, of getting some initial successes, only to end up in something even worse, the very dark years of ISIS, which filled the void. I’m glad to read this now, after the fall of Assad, which seemed very unlikely just a few years ago. This gives me hope, but it also terrifies me.

And I think this is where the book becomes particularly important for us Iranians. We have so much to learn and consider from this story. From the lies people told themselves when they saw the opposition and rebels committing atrocities, justifying everything they did because they felt that if they didn’t justify these things to themselves, it would mean they had lost their lives, family members, everything, for nothing. From the censorship they used when broadcasting this revolution, with the very noble intention of not letting any part of the official government story get confirmed. And from the years when they would say that it didn’t matter that different groups were involved in this fight of us against injustice and tyranny. We didn’t need to sit and think about the future and what sort of government we wanted. For now, we just needed to fight against Assad, and once he fell, we would have all the time in the world to decide on such details.

All of this ended in tragic results. Millions of Syrians from different sects and ethnicities were displaced and became refugees around the world, fleeing either the bombing of the Assad government with the help of Russia and Iran, or ISIS, which was born from the void left in rebel held areas that had been liberated from Assad but had no real way to keep them safe and make them function.

This is the kind of book I would come back to in the future and refer to many times in my discussions with friends. I just know it.

Very much recommend reading it to anyone.

[Souha]

Defiance is a strikingly honest memoir. What stayed with me most while reading it was the generosity with which Loubna Mrie shares her life. She does not simply recount events, she opens up her inner world with remarkable clarity and vulnerability. There is no attempt to dramatize or romanticize experience. Reading Defiance feels less like being told a story and more like being trusted with someone’s lived experience.

[Kristine]

enlightening

While I’m not a literary critic I can tell you with absolute certainty that this story is incredibly important. It’s a reminder that NO country or people are a monolith. The world is complicated and there are no simple answers. Conversely, we are all so very similar. We need only remember our shared humanity.

[Trevor Boyd]

An incredibly captivating and honest story. I knew nothing of the horrors happening in Syria. Its sad how easily removed you can be in the US from atrocities being committed in other countries.

[Shannon (The Book Club Mom)]

If you’re already compiling a stack of memoirs to read next month for #memoirmay, I have one that you must add. DEFIANCE by Loubna Mrie is powerful, educational, emotional, and heartbreaking. This is one of those memoirs that you didn’t even know you needed to read until you’re deep into the thick of it. Once you start, it will be hard to tear yourself away from it.

I will admit right away that my knowledge is lacking when it comes to Middle Eastern history and politics. So when the author reached out to me and asked if I would like a copy of her memoir, I was hesitant at first. After reading the description of DEFIANCE, I agreed because I knew it would open my eyes, educate me, and give me a better understanding of the political climate in Syria.

QUICK SYNOPSIS:
𝘈 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘪𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘺𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘣𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘮𝘦—𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘮.

READ THIS IF YOU ENJOY:

- Family drama and dynamics
- Politically-charged memoirs
- Coming-of-age stories
- Resistance, rebellion, and activism
- Emotional reads
- Strong and brave characters
- Insight on the Syrian Civil War
- Reflections on loss and grief

This memoir is very detailed and eventful, so I don’t want to share too much. I won’t be able to do it justice. Just know that I was completely captivated and absorbed from start to finish. Mrie has quite the story to tell. I will say that this isn’t an easy memoir to read. It’s quite dark and heavy and some parts were very difficult to read about. The fact that Mrie is even alive to tell her story is indeed a miracle and a blessing. The amount of near-death experiences she encountered blew my mind.

I highly recommend the audio version as Mrie narrates her own story, and it feels like you’re having a deeply personal one-on-one conversation with her. The emotion in her voice amplifies the entire reading experience. I will never forget her story.

[Marlou]

5 +⭐️!!!!

[lys]

“Normality glides forward, slowly, rapidly, ineluctably, perpetually. It’s horrifying how life can go on, uninterrupted, despite all of the agony taking place elsewhere on the same earth. How is it that the whole world does not pause and come together to do something, anything, to stop this—or at least to mourn?”

This is without a doubt the most powerful and heartbreaking memoir I have ever read. I cannot even begin to find the words to do it justice, and it enrages me that it hasn’t gotten more attention.

“A heavy wave of sadness debilitates me. The sadness of realizing that I had never imagined experiencing a war where I would be overwhelmed with uncontrollable jealously toward someone because he was able to bury the upper half of his mother’s body.”

“Words cannot convey how a revolution transforms you; you have to live it. No matter how many books you read, nothing compares to the first chant you hear emanating from the depth of your heart. Nothing compares to the sound of the first explosion or the sight of the first death.”

[William Lexner]

The memoirs of an overprivileged daughter who used to hang out near the war for internet cred.

I appreciate the raw honesty, but I can't help but detest the author as a human being.

She’s like a dumber version of Jenny from Forrest Gump if Forrest died because of her.

[Julei]

I am not the same person I was before I read this book. Thank you.

[Elizabeth Chan]

I read this book without a particularly deep prior understanding of the Arab Spring and its impact in Syria specifically. This was an extraordinary memoir of Loubna’s transformation and metamorphosis, as a member of Syria’s Alawite elite and becoming an anti-government activist.

This book is deeply personal. We see a Syria through the eyes of Loubna, wealthy, elite but growing up in a dysfunctional family, with a secretive and abusive father—and a loving but fearful mother.

Loubna points out the layers of dissonance in her family story. Her mother rebelled against her own parents to marry Jawdat, only to be ultimately killed at his hands. She grows up in a comfortable and elite bubble and it was only at university that she realised the propaganda that had surrounded her own upbringing.

Loubna does a fantastic job giving us enough background on the situation in Syria without it being overly academic, and always reminding us that this is her story. And it is deeply tragic. One is the guilt she feels because her father kills her mum in retribution for her political activities. The other is not loving Peter her boyfriend before he became one of ISIS’s victims — his death horribly recorded in a video and broadcast to the world. Her own struggles with alcohol and drowning her sorrows and guilt in Arak, champagne and whatever was served at the “Syrian Cafe” in Instanbul.

I loved hearing about her story arc and how she became a photojournalist. What motivated her and what depleted her. Her desire to record what was really happening in Syria. What it means to be a political activist in-country and in-exile. The difference between what’s really happening on the ground and the stories that an international audience wants to hear.

I would highly recommend this book to learn about Syria and political activism, and to enjoy the spellbinding writing of an excellent and courageous author.

[SummerRae]

I'm struggling with what to say after reading this, so this might be scattered...oh well lol

Okay, this was one of the best memoirs I have ever read. I struggle with memoirs in general sometimes because I feel like people are trying to polish their life as they write it. They give you the social media version lol. That is not the case here. She was incredibly honest. She gave the raw, unfiltered, account of her journey. She made a lot of mistakes, she was never perfect, or honestly likable at times in this but she kept going on a path led by morality. What is right and what is wrong. Sometimes the mistakes we make lead us on the path we are supposed to go. I am in awe of her strength and resilience. How she keeps going, even now, to tell the truth. There is nothing more important than that. I only hope I am able to obtain a quarter of that in my life.

The writing was fantastic. What I loved is she was able to write this in a way that you almost felt like you were there experiencing not the just the terror but the beauty and the culture of Syria. I also found it fascinating hearing her and on the ground accounts of situations that went international. It was really eye opening, and something I am trying to better myself on is actually learning about other countries in the headlines and not just the headlines.

I highly recommend. You will go through all the emotions, but it is very worth it. My old best book of the year has been overtaken :)

[Sara Kuwatly]

I'm having a hard time putting all my thoughts into a cohesive review, so here are some of those thoughts: (who knows, maybe one day I'll come back and write a good review)
- I'm so glad that Loubna wrote this book - her perspective as a young woman on Syria pre and during the revolution is so important and i'm glad that it's being recorded and immortalized in this book
- Some pages felt like I was reading my own journal, as someone who (clearly) struggles to put my thoughts and feeling into words, I felt seen
- This book made me laugh, cry, and gasp multiple times
- I just have so much respect for people who are willing to be so vulnerable with the world, like thank you for letting us into your head and being so generous with your story

[Erica Strange]

One of the best memoirs I've read. Loubna Mrie's story is a painstakingly honest and raw account of growing up in Syria, facing abuse, joining the rebellion, experiencing grief and exile, and so much more.

Mrie's journey is far from straightforward. She makes mistakes, some of which she has to face the painful consequences of. That's also what makes this memoir so powerful: she doesn't try to present herself as a hero or simplify her experiences. Instead, she gives us an honest account of the choices she made, the consequences she faced, and everything that shaped her along the way.

I also highly recommend listening to the audiobook, which Mrie narrates herself. The heartbreak, anger, and defiance are all there in her voice, making an already emotional story even more powerful. And despite all the pain she experiences, Mrie is also funny, sprinkling her dark humour throughout the book.

[Diana Ishaqat]

I couldn’t stop reading. Brave, personal, insightful, and human. Mrie is the voice of a generation of activists in exile. I will never forget this book.

As I write this, I worry my review will make it seem as though this book is catered to the West. It is not. The author is brutally honest about her family, her own actions, and her life-forming decisions. I don’t think anyone else writing about their own activism has ever been this open about feelings of doubt, guilt, shame, and relationships.

As readers, we are transported into chaos, a clash of interests and histories, the shadows of the manosphere, and the quest for freedom and dignity.

Each part shows Mrie’s inner dialogue: what was the right thing to do, for whom, and under what circumstances?

As is often the case, the first shackles women try to break from are those of the patriarchy.

I think this book will one day be turned into a movie or a play. I just hope that, if this happens, the author is personally involved to ensure its accuracy.

[Marina Prediger]

Wow - what a heavy, insightful ride. This story brings truth to the uprising/rebellion in Syria from a young, budding photojournalist Syrian woman. It talks about the rebellion's start and how Isis came in. I found this read very heavy, but thought provoking. "How can you make people care?"

[Rebecca Gomes]

The best book I have EVER read. A total triumph and a literary masterpiece. Thank you for sharing your incredible story.

[janan]

Necessary read.

[Alexa Anderson]

Best Memoir I've ever read.

[Kathleen W.]

The story could have been much more interesting. The author grew up with a messed up family and at the same time became very spoiled and entitled. She put her family at risk by doing things she knew could get them killed, but she refused to stop. English is not her first language and there is a very heavy accent on the audiobook, making it difficult to understand. It went on and on over the same things and was boring at times.

It's an important time in Syria but this is not a great way to learn about the people. Look for other books on this topic. I really should have deleted the book but I finished it and it never did get better.

[CherylBCz]

I hesitate with memoirs because I prefer to feel engaged with their story in finding similarities to my experiences. But this story, Loubda’s, is so foreign that I approached it without judgment. And it makes me rethink: it is helpful to approach someone else’s truth if you don’t know where they are coming from, with humility and curiosity.
I am compassionately humbled.

[Angelica Fox]

This memoir powerfully explores resilience and women’s empowerment within a culture shaped by obedience, power, and tyranny. I was especially struck by how honestly it addresses mental health, which remains deeply stigmatized in many cultures.
The most heartbreaking part is that the immigrant’s journey does not necessarily end with survival or arrival in a new country. She may still be haunted by the challenges of displacement, racism and white supremacy, and the ongoing instability faced by many refugees in United States. Is it freedom real?

[Maggie]

Absolutely devastating. So many tears. But incredibly moving. How do you describe a book like this? Certainly one of the most beautifully written memoirs I’ve read. But more than that, Loubna is so raw and unvarnished. She is not a hero - just a human, making many mistakes, living with regret and learning to make sense of the trauma of her country, culture and family: the patriarchy, misogyny, abuse, and senseless killing and destruction. I am ashamed at how little I understood regarding the Syrian war. Thank you, Loubna, for your bravery sharing your story and very personal experiences. I hope it makes us all more committed to goodness and human dignity.

[Mo Damirji]

One of the best books I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Incredibly powerful and moving

[Naeem]

I have some reluctance in going the full five stars on this book, to which I will return in the end. Let me start with the many strengths of this book.

A little detour first. Before retiring, I was a professor of international relations theory, not of a student of current events or recent history, but of the structural history of the world political economy. On more current events, for example, the endless wars perpetrated by the USA against Third World states, I try to wait a few years before seeking to learn something about the invasions' effects on the targeted countries. My strategy is to turn to novels or memoirs. This way, I get not only the facts but the inner life of facts as they move through the lives of people. This strategy helps me retain the facts and it helps me understand the impossible necessities of the conflicts. So, for example, when I wished to learn something about Lebanon, I read Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir and the brake up of Yugoslavia led me to The Bridge on the Drina. I spent an entire summer reading only novels by Iraqi authors, for example, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1.... You get the idea.

I was confused by what's happening in Syria, so I waited for a book like this one. It did everything I needed it to do. For example, I learned of the different sects and their political and cultural orientation. I learned how "foreign fighters" came to Syria and the vexed role of Western aid institutions. And, I learned of Turkey's role in all this.

In addition, the narrator takes every opportunity to make herself complicit in everything going on in the country and in the damages that accrue to her own life. This is the great strength of the book. Loubna Mrie vividly shows her participation in the tragedies that befall her and her country. It is rare that any character is represented as the epitome of evil. Mostly, everyone is grounded in the impossibility of their own dire circumstances. The story is continuously heart breaking but I never felt that my my more saccharine impulses were being taken advantage of.

I listened to the book which is narrated by the author herself. Her voice is engaging and there are two sections where she barely holds on to speak her words. Powerful.

The negative. Had this been a story told not by a young Syrian woman and instead by someone living in Europe or the USA, I would have written it off as a kind of self-destructive pathos that eventually triumphs in self-reparation. The kind of story that seems that publishers think will sell well. The kind of story that comes out of an MFA in the US. This small lingering irritation kept me from a full embrace of the story. But, I suppose this is not her fault.

Rather, I left the book admiring the courage of loubna Mrie, both in her daring actions and in her self-criticism. Her desire to always hold on to what is just redeems the project and wins over the reader. It might also make this an important work.