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Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution
From Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, a mesmerizing and powerful account of six Syrians fighting for a better world, in the tradition of classic works by Philip Gourevitch and Katherine Boo.
In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. For the next eighteen months, citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.
Days of Love and Rage details the powerfully intimate narratives of men and women who led this struggle, and who experience the highs of camaraderie and the lows of a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality.
Anand Gopal immerses you in the world of a single city in the throes of revolution, and lays bare the danger that inequality poses to democracy. But this book transcends the particulars of one terrible conflict to tell the sweeping story of democracy and rising authoritarianism in our times. It is, above all, an account of the best and worst of humanity. Both tragic and inspiring, Days of Love and Rage is a story of our enduring human need for freedom, security, dignity, community, love, and hope.
In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. For the next eighteen months, citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.
Days of Love and Rage details the powerfully intimate narratives of men and women who led this struggle, and who experience the highs of camaraderie and the lows of a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality.
Anand Gopal immerses you in the world of a single city in the throes of revolution, and lays bare the danger that inequality poses to democracy. But this book transcends the particulars of one terrible conflict to tell the sweeping story of democracy and rising authoritarianism in our times. It is, above all, an account of the best and worst of humanity. Both tragic and inspiring, Days of Love and Rage is a story of our enduring human need for freedom, security, dignity, community, love, and hope.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
May 19, 2026
3.5 stars
Super important and harrowing nonfiction book that follows six Syrians fighting for a better world amidst an authoritarian government. Lots of heartbreaking, brutal content (e.g., the descriptions of torture were awful though of course important to document) and also great showcasing of the human fight for freedom and dignity. I thought Anand Gopal took great care to portray the individuals in this book with sensitivity and three-dimensionality. There are unfortunately relevant takeaways given the rise of authoritarianism in different parts of the world generally. Also portrayed the serious costs of activism when fighting against a government that doesn’t view you as human or worthy of any respect.
I lower my rating a bit just because history, or texts that focus on history, can be a bit hard for me to follow if the writing isn’t super crisp. Gopal’s writing was solid though just felt a bit detail-heavy at times. But that estimation of his writing just be how my brain doesn’t digest history or history-focused writing easily. Again, a crucial, devastating book.
Super important and harrowing nonfiction book that follows six Syrians fighting for a better world amidst an authoritarian government. Lots of heartbreaking, brutal content (e.g., the descriptions of torture were awful though of course important to document) and also great showcasing of the human fight for freedom and dignity. I thought Anand Gopal took great care to portray the individuals in this book with sensitivity and three-dimensionality. There are unfortunately relevant takeaways given the rise of authoritarianism in different parts of the world generally. Also portrayed the serious costs of activism when fighting against a government that doesn’t view you as human or worthy of any respect.
I lower my rating a bit just because history, or texts that focus on history, can be a bit hard for me to follow if the writing isn’t super crisp. Gopal’s writing was solid though just felt a bit detail-heavy at times. But that estimation of his writing just be how my brain doesn’t digest history or history-focused writing easily. Again, a crucial, devastating book.
March 18, 2026
Every so often one comes in contact with a piece of human creation that is immediately recognizable as a masterpiece. This is one of those moments. "Days of Love and Rage" chronicles the tortuous journey of the ordinary citizens of Manbij, Syria from 2011 to 2025 as they bravely pursue the right to govern themselves.
First, they risk their lives to remove the Assad regime and establish a democratically-run city state. That successful effort is subsequently weakened by conflict over policy objectives and schisms between local leaders. Frustration and discordance enable ISIS to slowly take over the city and subsume Manbij into its caliphate. Citizens continue to rebel, setting the stage for the removal of ISIS by U.S.-backed forces, albeit at a tremendous loss of life and infrastructure.
This is a saga of humans facing torture, imprisonment, loss of livelihood, loss of family, and death for democracy and the principles of liberalism. Through 2,000 interviews along with text and video records, Gopal gives the reader a front row seat to common people doing unimaginably brave things.
First, they risk their lives to remove the Assad regime and establish a democratically-run city state. That successful effort is subsequently weakened by conflict over policy objectives and schisms between local leaders. Frustration and discordance enable ISIS to slowly take over the city and subsume Manbij into its caliphate. Citizens continue to rebel, setting the stage for the removal of ISIS by U.S.-backed forces, albeit at a tremendous loss of life and infrastructure.
This is a saga of humans facing torture, imprisonment, loss of livelihood, loss of family, and death for democracy and the principles of liberalism. Through 2,000 interviews along with text and video records, Gopal gives the reader a front row seat to common people doing unimaginably brave things.
May 5, 2026
A tour de force of humanity and instant classic of nonfiction narrative writing.
March 27, 2026
While this is an exquisitely reported, thoroughly commanding work of journalism that deserves all of our time and respect, I can’t lie and say I was excited to continue listening to this audiobook all the way through.
I learned much about Syria, middle eastern political movements, uprising and rebellion, and I learned about the brave, every-day-sort-of-hero that it takes to make something like these movements happen.
Alas, sometimes, like in some memoir, the details were wrought with such precision as to make me question if some stories were overly embellished to make it read like fiction. Sometimes that works out, but here, it almost felt like it drew the stories out far longer than needed.
Probably, this narrative, human-centered storytelling is the most approachable way to be introduced to much of the complex issues surrounding Syria in the depth Gopal is able to seamlessly describe here, but still—as a book this felt like a lot more like work than interesting reading. I still did the work though, so that speaks volumes about the quality of the book here.
I learned much about Syria, middle eastern political movements, uprising and rebellion, and I learned about the brave, every-day-sort-of-hero that it takes to make something like these movements happen.
Alas, sometimes, like in some memoir, the details were wrought with such precision as to make me question if some stories were overly embellished to make it read like fiction. Sometimes that works out, but here, it almost felt like it drew the stories out far longer than needed.
Probably, this narrative, human-centered storytelling is the most approachable way to be introduced to much of the complex issues surrounding Syria in the depth Gopal is able to seamlessly describe here, but still—as a book this felt like a lot more like work than interesting reading. I still did the work though, so that speaks volumes about the quality of the book here.
April 4, 2026
dal bych víc hvězd. neuvěřitelná věc
April 27, 2026
Harrowing and devastating. As a piece of journalism, it’s perhaps the best piece of non fiction I’ve ever read, breaking down the Syrian revolution through the events in Manbij, a city the size of Dunedin located about 90 minutes from Aleppo. Every state backed group acts indefeasibly, there are no winners, and the innocent are constant collateral damage.
September 6, 2026
I was perusing my Goodreads pal Brendan's recent reads, knowing he has penchant for well-written history books. (I would like to add that I consulted with the thesaurus to ensure "peruse" was the correct wording in the context—and was delighted to discover it is a "contronym"—or, in short, words that are their own opposites. I don't believe I'm the only person unfamiliar with this word, as it is marked as a typo and the dictionary estimates there are around 100 of them that have been listed in the English language.)
Moving on. Of course I had to immediately order this once I saw it was written by none other than Anand Gopal. His debut book, No Good Men Among the Living was written much in the same style of Days and Love and Rage: focusing on ordinarily people during extraordinary times while independently verifying many of their stories through friends and adversaries to get the most unbiased picture.
It's always so much easier to write a review for a book you can't stand. You realize immediately what's irking you and what can be objectively used as criticism against a book. Promoting it as a genre it isn't a part of, spelling and grammatical errors, repetition and contradictions—you get my point. I just didn't want anyone to say that there is no objectivity in books. That's like saying all music is subjective. Yet my violin music competitions in K-12 would beg to differ.
What's fascinating about Gopal's approach to journalism is that he truly becomes immersed in the cause, in the lives of the people he's chronicling. He takes serious risks to show our ethnocentric American country the real Syrian Civil War and how its ordinary civilians really saw American intervention during the time we were "backing" the rebels. The use of quotations there is quite deliberate—most countries are fully aware that we are not selflessly fighting for democracy and equal rights across the globe. Had that been the case, the Jakarta Method and the ruthless coups throughout the Cold War years to replace democratically-elected leaders with dictatorial puppet regimes favorable to American policies never would have occurred.
You really connect with the stories you read—because Gopal is meticulous in taking a nuanced strategy. No single man or woman is a depicted as an innocent saint—nor are they depicted as soulless sinners. The story of Oday broke my heart. A lot of stories broke my heart. Images of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children—all waiting for their loved ones to be released from the "labyrinthine" prisons weaving underground beneath the deserts—despite Gopal having definitively confirmed their deaths. That's certainly when hope can become the most dangerous drug of all. Given that many prisoners of these Arab Spring countries (and other countries throughout history during war) were said to be dead, only to show up years later—it's not an unreasonable assumption.
He follows the story from the very start of the Arab Spring in Syria, after Bashar al-Assad's regime disappeared a group of teenage boys who sprayed a graffiti warning on the wall of their school to al-Assad: "It's your turn, doctor"—not exactly the threat it may sound like—merely a reminder that many dictators who had been assumed untouchable had fled overnight after decades of rule in response to the uprising of their citizenry. Hence, al-Assad would be wise to heed the fates of the fallen dictators and begin to respect the demands made by his country's citizens. Of course, we know what happened next: 13 years of civil war, before Bashar al-Assad finally lost his grip on power in December 2024. He survived the chaos and the rebel factions thanks to the military backing of Russia, Iran, North Korea. Once Russia became preoccupied with Ukraine, things got tougher. Once Iran had its hands full with not just Israel but the U.S., it became a foregone conclusion.
I'd always believed that the all of the high school boys had been tortured then disappeared, especially after the comment made by Atef Najib, Assad's cousin and former head of security. The infamous "joke" to parents demanding the release of their children: "Your children aren't coming back. If you want children, go make new ones. Otherwise, send your wives to me and I'll do it for you." (That's not the quote verbatim, but it's close enough that nothing meaningful has been changed.) Yet contrary to my belief, I found an article on one of the boys who was 15 at the time, and is now 30 years old, written in February 2025 on the bittersweet fall of the regime.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sy...
Not sure if you can still link to outside articles on here, since much has changed since I was last on Goodreads—especially to write a review.
Some of the torture scenes are described rather thoroughly, although the purpose isn't to shock the reader. It's for readers to gain a better understanding that so many of these people were being tortured in such grotesque ways—all for peaceful protests, and often, not just under suspicion of speaking out against the regime. Yet it also shows the tenacity with which ordinary civilians became freedom fighters—sometimes overnight—and how they refused to bow to cruelty. That is the kind of protesting and cause that earns my respect. Not the kind of virtue-signaling and moral grandstanding we're so prone to seeing in the United States. If you want equality for any marginalized groups, do better than create a bunch of useless terminology and "plans" that sound very powerful, but have no real practical use and are thus merely grandiloquent. Respect to Oday for not breaking no matter what punishment ISIL/ISIS threw at him, along with the many other characters of this heartbreaking narrative. I can only imagine the survivor's guilt many of them must feel.
I can't do much more than say this is absolutely a FIVE-STAR READ, Gopal deserves a Pulitzer, and you'd be remiss not to read this profoundly beautiful writing. Unfortunately, I do need to get back to boring LSAT prep—which is what I constantly tell people I'm doing, so people likely think I've mastered the test by now. No. I never really do it unless I'm taking a lesson with my tutor, who is fantastic and scored a perfect 180 too many times—to the point that LSAC literally told him he'd already demonstrated perfection, there was no 181 hiding somewhere, take the win and go home. He likes to scream at me sometimes, but it's efficient, so I'll take the heat.
I may add more later because I do actually have them written in my notes, but here are some quotes which really resonated with me:
"Four young men were strung up by their wrists like flanks of meat...a baton slammed into Oday's ribs. 1st Lt. Maymati was pacing the cell, enraged, as if the captives had insulted his honor. He said that the protesters would bring chaos to their city, and he was punishing them for their own good, as he would his own children...as Oday hung from the ceiling, he wept, enraging 1st Lt. Maymati further. He raised his cudgel. Whack. Oday screamed. 1st Lt. Maymati raised the cudgel again. Whack. Oday screamed louder...it was raised again.
Some captive protesters report that, in such moments, the cell sorts itself into those who will survive and those who won't. Those who count the blows, hoping each is the last, rarely tend to make it. But there are a few who use the fraction of a second before the cudgel makes contact with the skin to lift themselves above the dungeon, above cold cement.
In that moment, they are steeped in the warmth of cardamom tea. They taste the pine nuts in their mother's sheikh al-mahshi; they smell their girlfriend's oud. They do not count.
And they usually survive.
Whack.
Gut-wrenching, but appropriately balanced between hope, rage, good, evil, violence, peace. I do have more quotes that I can easily post later, unlike trying to review from scratch.
Not sure how I feel about the new Syrian government that replaced Bashar al-Assad. In a power vacuum, you don't always know the intentions behind the victors assuming power. Perhaps in the beginning their goals truly were to spark a free country, a truly democratic Syria. But as we all know, and as the protesters in the book agonize over—there is such a thing as too much freedom. After all, what is freedom if people are not protected to pursue their life ambitions and goals? And finding that balance between freedom and security can be a very tricky goal indeed.
As any logical individual should, I can't judge the current government by its words or its sweeping promises. No matter how reform-minded and ordinary they may have started, like all our citizens from Manbij, there will be mass cries for revenge on their former tormentors. They will face threats and challenges to their power—some warranted, some outright hostile. These individuals spend so long fighting, surviving, dreaming, that they often have no idea what to do once they realize they're the ones now in control of all the demands for peace and freedom they had been once promoting against what they saw as an omnipotent regime. Instead, we must pay attention to their actions and ask if they're consistent with democratic principles.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's president since January 2025, has already violated these democratic principles by recently handpicking and appointing all seven justices to the Syrian Supreme Constitutional Court. Many news outlets are pointing to the risk associated with such actions: the Court ends up becoming just another extension of the executive branch, instead of operating independently to keep its powers in check.
It's strange that I started this book, only got about 20 pages in, and then picked it up and started and finished it right as al-Sharaa's government had sentenced Bashar al-Assad and his two cousins to death for their crimes against humanity. Both cousins were present and in cages. This decision has already sparked outcry from human rights watchdog organizations—who fear that the new government may simply start executing former regime workers en masse, depriving them of their right to due process.
Bashar al-Assad was sentenced to death in absentia, of course. He is currently still living in Russian exile, among Putin's collection of "failed dictators of depreciated value." No, really, Putin's got like five of them housed there. He is no doubt studying ophthalmology as he continues to stay out of the public eye.
Moving on. Of course I had to immediately order this once I saw it was written by none other than Anand Gopal. His debut book, No Good Men Among the Living was written much in the same style of Days and Love and Rage: focusing on ordinarily people during extraordinary times while independently verifying many of their stories through friends and adversaries to get the most unbiased picture.
It's always so much easier to write a review for a book you can't stand. You realize immediately what's irking you and what can be objectively used as criticism against a book. Promoting it as a genre it isn't a part of, spelling and grammatical errors, repetition and contradictions—you get my point. I just didn't want anyone to say that there is no objectivity in books. That's like saying all music is subjective. Yet my violin music competitions in K-12 would beg to differ.
What's fascinating about Gopal's approach to journalism is that he truly becomes immersed in the cause, in the lives of the people he's chronicling. He takes serious risks to show our ethnocentric American country the real Syrian Civil War and how its ordinary civilians really saw American intervention during the time we were "backing" the rebels. The use of quotations there is quite deliberate—most countries are fully aware that we are not selflessly fighting for democracy and equal rights across the globe. Had that been the case, the Jakarta Method and the ruthless coups throughout the Cold War years to replace democratically-elected leaders with dictatorial puppet regimes favorable to American policies never would have occurred.
You really connect with the stories you read—because Gopal is meticulous in taking a nuanced strategy. No single man or woman is a depicted as an innocent saint—nor are they depicted as soulless sinners. The story of Oday broke my heart. A lot of stories broke my heart. Images of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children—all waiting for their loved ones to be released from the "labyrinthine" prisons weaving underground beneath the deserts—despite Gopal having definitively confirmed their deaths. That's certainly when hope can become the most dangerous drug of all. Given that many prisoners of these Arab Spring countries (and other countries throughout history during war) were said to be dead, only to show up years later—it's not an unreasonable assumption.
He follows the story from the very start of the Arab Spring in Syria, after Bashar al-Assad's regime disappeared a group of teenage boys who sprayed a graffiti warning on the wall of their school to al-Assad: "It's your turn, doctor"—not exactly the threat it may sound like—merely a reminder that many dictators who had been assumed untouchable had fled overnight after decades of rule in response to the uprising of their citizenry. Hence, al-Assad would be wise to heed the fates of the fallen dictators and begin to respect the demands made by his country's citizens. Of course, we know what happened next: 13 years of civil war, before Bashar al-Assad finally lost his grip on power in December 2024. He survived the chaos and the rebel factions thanks to the military backing of Russia, Iran, North Korea. Once Russia became preoccupied with Ukraine, things got tougher. Once Iran had its hands full with not just Israel but the U.S., it became a foregone conclusion.
I'd always believed that the all of the high school boys had been tortured then disappeared, especially after the comment made by Atef Najib, Assad's cousin and former head of security. The infamous "joke" to parents demanding the release of their children: "Your children aren't coming back. If you want children, go make new ones. Otherwise, send your wives to me and I'll do it for you." (That's not the quote verbatim, but it's close enough that nothing meaningful has been changed.) Yet contrary to my belief, I found an article on one of the boys who was 15 at the time, and is now 30 years old, written in February 2025 on the bittersweet fall of the regime.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sy...
Not sure if you can still link to outside articles on here, since much has changed since I was last on Goodreads—especially to write a review.
Some of the torture scenes are described rather thoroughly, although the purpose isn't to shock the reader. It's for readers to gain a better understanding that so many of these people were being tortured in such grotesque ways—all for peaceful protests, and often, not just under suspicion of speaking out against the regime. Yet it also shows the tenacity with which ordinary civilians became freedom fighters—sometimes overnight—and how they refused to bow to cruelty. That is the kind of protesting and cause that earns my respect. Not the kind of virtue-signaling and moral grandstanding we're so prone to seeing in the United States. If you want equality for any marginalized groups, do better than create a bunch of useless terminology and "plans" that sound very powerful, but have no real practical use and are thus merely grandiloquent. Respect to Oday for not breaking no matter what punishment ISIL/ISIS threw at him, along with the many other characters of this heartbreaking narrative. I can only imagine the survivor's guilt many of them must feel.
I can't do much more than say this is absolutely a FIVE-STAR READ, Gopal deserves a Pulitzer, and you'd be remiss not to read this profoundly beautiful writing. Unfortunately, I do need to get back to boring LSAT prep—which is what I constantly tell people I'm doing, so people likely think I've mastered the test by now. No. I never really do it unless I'm taking a lesson with my tutor, who is fantastic and scored a perfect 180 too many times—to the point that LSAC literally told him he'd already demonstrated perfection, there was no 181 hiding somewhere, take the win and go home. He likes to scream at me sometimes, but it's efficient, so I'll take the heat.
I may add more later because I do actually have them written in my notes, but here are some quotes which really resonated with me:
"Four young men were strung up by their wrists like flanks of meat...a baton slammed into Oday's ribs. 1st Lt. Maymati was pacing the cell, enraged, as if the captives had insulted his honor. He said that the protesters would bring chaos to their city, and he was punishing them for their own good, as he would his own children...as Oday hung from the ceiling, he wept, enraging 1st Lt. Maymati further. He raised his cudgel. Whack. Oday screamed. 1st Lt. Maymati raised the cudgel again. Whack. Oday screamed louder...it was raised again.
Some captive protesters report that, in such moments, the cell sorts itself into those who will survive and those who won't. Those who count the blows, hoping each is the last, rarely tend to make it. But there are a few who use the fraction of a second before the cudgel makes contact with the skin to lift themselves above the dungeon, above cold cement.
In that moment, they are steeped in the warmth of cardamom tea. They taste the pine nuts in their mother's sheikh al-mahshi; they smell their girlfriend's oud. They do not count.
And they usually survive.
Whack.
Gut-wrenching, but appropriately balanced between hope, rage, good, evil, violence, peace. I do have more quotes that I can easily post later, unlike trying to review from scratch.
Not sure how I feel about the new Syrian government that replaced Bashar al-Assad. In a power vacuum, you don't always know the intentions behind the victors assuming power. Perhaps in the beginning their goals truly were to spark a free country, a truly democratic Syria. But as we all know, and as the protesters in the book agonize over—there is such a thing as too much freedom. After all, what is freedom if people are not protected to pursue their life ambitions and goals? And finding that balance between freedom and security can be a very tricky goal indeed.
As any logical individual should, I can't judge the current government by its words or its sweeping promises. No matter how reform-minded and ordinary they may have started, like all our citizens from Manbij, there will be mass cries for revenge on their former tormentors. They will face threats and challenges to their power—some warranted, some outright hostile. These individuals spend so long fighting, surviving, dreaming, that they often have no idea what to do once they realize they're the ones now in control of all the demands for peace and freedom they had been once promoting against what they saw as an omnipotent regime. Instead, we must pay attention to their actions and ask if they're consistent with democratic principles.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's president since January 2025, has already violated these democratic principles by recently handpicking and appointing all seven justices to the Syrian Supreme Constitutional Court. Many news outlets are pointing to the risk associated with such actions: the Court ends up becoming just another extension of the executive branch, instead of operating independently to keep its powers in check.
It's strange that I started this book, only got about 20 pages in, and then picked it up and started and finished it right as al-Sharaa's government had sentenced Bashar al-Assad and his two cousins to death for their crimes against humanity. Both cousins were present and in cages. This decision has already sparked outcry from human rights watchdog organizations—who fear that the new government may simply start executing former regime workers en masse, depriving them of their right to due process.
Bashar al-Assad was sentenced to death in absentia, of course. He is currently still living in Russian exile, among Putin's collection of "failed dictators of depreciated value." No, really, Putin's got like five of them housed there. He is no doubt studying ophthalmology as he continues to stay out of the public eye.
April 20, 2026
I appreciate the audacity of this book's aim to provide a kaleidoscopic view of the syrian revolution through individuals' experiences and lives. The amount of work that went into this history is astounding, and Gopal does an admirable job of rooting the reader in the town and its chaos. However, I couldn't keep all the characters straight, the revolutions and counterrevolutions blurred, and the underlying morality became murkier as time passed. Perhaps that is the point. Gopal tries to salvage hope from the story, but it is a thin reed in the end. ultimately very depressing.
May 20, 2026
Six Syrians in the city of Manbji come to life in this extensively reported book on Syrians' efforts to overthrow Assad. At the time, Manjib was the largest liberated city and became the first to form a participatory democracy. The book covers how Syrians achieved liberation from the regime and how they struggled to establish a democracy. Due to inequality and crime during the fledgling democracy, ISIS outsiders were able to take over by promising justice and help for the working class. Eventually many countries, including the US, were backing different groups fighting in Syria and cities like Manbji were bombed until ISIS retreated.
My favorite parts of this book were learning about these individuals' lives, they were shown in all their complexities. I thought it was interesting to see what brought people into the fight for freedom. I was also very interested in the role women played in the revolution and how of course they were not allowed a voting seat on the revolutionary council. The middle section of this large book was long for me. I got a little lost in all the names and fighting between different revolutionaries after the first liberation. Also, torture, so much torture is detailed.
Coffeepot Roundabout, Book Roundabout, Sailboat Roundabout
positive vs. negative freedoms
velvet elites vs. street
brothers beating or killing their sisters for family honor
"And so, impulsively, people stepped out. They emerged onto the street and joined the procession. Out came Ibrahim, who'd never given a thought to taking part but whose baby brother was somewhere in the swarm, among the marchers. Out came Mina and her husband, walking hand in hand, disappearing into the stream of bodies. Out came housewives and mothers who had never imagined themselves on this stage, or any stage. Out came so many more. And who were they? They were ordinary people, thrust into extraordinary circumstances. They might have watched grainy footage on television and shook their heads, they might have passed homeless hags with crenelated teeth and said, "there but for the grace of God," they might have lined up for work under the girders and cranes of dusty lotes—they might have lived a thousand lives in anonymity, had the regime proved more powerful than the truth. But truth stands on its own, and only lies require scaffolding." p.166
"Was it all worth it? I came to Manbij because I wanted to know: Would it have been better for people never to have stepped onto the rain-slicked streets that April afternoon in 2011 and demanded freedom? Should they have kept quiet, choosing a desolate peace over the horrors that followed? Certainly, tens of thousands would still be alive. Families would be unbroken, cities intact. So many people risked their futures, only to find their world gone to ashes. Looking at everything that's been lost, was it not now perfectly reasonable to give in to despair? and if not, how was one supposed to resist that temptation? This isn't merely a question for Syrians. In an epoch of crumbling institutions and rising oceans, it's one we all confront. To persist in the shadow of great loss demands a certain kind of hopefulness—and that, ultimately, is why I'd come: to investigate the limits and possibilities of hope in a damaged world." p. 458
"Oday's hope, I now understand, was a radical hope: that no matter the disaster in front of him, goodness is possible, even if it is impossible to know how and when it might arrive. Such a hope believes there are fates worse than death. It acts as if another world is possible, while accepting that the world may "close in on you" first. It is a hope that, when transmitted to children, or left behind in books or songs and institutions, can grow and multiply. This is sometimes called a "revolutionary tradition." p. 496
My favorite parts of this book were learning about these individuals' lives, they were shown in all their complexities. I thought it was interesting to see what brought people into the fight for freedom. I was also very interested in the role women played in the revolution and how of course they were not allowed a voting seat on the revolutionary council. The middle section of this large book was long for me. I got a little lost in all the names and fighting between different revolutionaries after the first liberation. Also, torture, so much torture is detailed.
Coffeepot Roundabout, Book Roundabout, Sailboat Roundabout
positive vs. negative freedoms
velvet elites vs. street
brothers beating or killing their sisters for family honor
"And so, impulsively, people stepped out. They emerged onto the street and joined the procession. Out came Ibrahim, who'd never given a thought to taking part but whose baby brother was somewhere in the swarm, among the marchers. Out came Mina and her husband, walking hand in hand, disappearing into the stream of bodies. Out came housewives and mothers who had never imagined themselves on this stage, or any stage. Out came so many more. And who were they? They were ordinary people, thrust into extraordinary circumstances. They might have watched grainy footage on television and shook their heads, they might have passed homeless hags with crenelated teeth and said, "there but for the grace of God," they might have lined up for work under the girders and cranes of dusty lotes—they might have lived a thousand lives in anonymity, had the regime proved more powerful than the truth. But truth stands on its own, and only lies require scaffolding." p.166
"Was it all worth it? I came to Manbij because I wanted to know: Would it have been better for people never to have stepped onto the rain-slicked streets that April afternoon in 2011 and demanded freedom? Should they have kept quiet, choosing a desolate peace over the horrors that followed? Certainly, tens of thousands would still be alive. Families would be unbroken, cities intact. So many people risked their futures, only to find their world gone to ashes. Looking at everything that's been lost, was it not now perfectly reasonable to give in to despair? and if not, how was one supposed to resist that temptation? This isn't merely a question for Syrians. In an epoch of crumbling institutions and rising oceans, it's one we all confront. To persist in the shadow of great loss demands a certain kind of hopefulness—and that, ultimately, is why I'd come: to investigate the limits and possibilities of hope in a damaged world." p. 458
"Oday's hope, I now understand, was a radical hope: that no matter the disaster in front of him, goodness is possible, even if it is impossible to know how and when it might arrive. Such a hope believes there are fates worse than death. It acts as if another world is possible, while accepting that the world may "close in on you" first. It is a hope that, when transmitted to children, or left behind in books or songs and institutions, can grow and multiply. This is sometimes called a "revolutionary tradition." p. 496
July 18, 2026
This is probably the best book I have ever read.
Every statement in this 500-page tome has been meticulously researched. The last 30 percent of the book is notes on methodology, corpora of sources, an index, a bibliography and statement-by-statement refences. To verify most claims, Anand Gopal and his team conducted 2,000 interviews. Each idea was cross-referenced among several sources. This is the way to do narrative nonfiction.
All this work is a feat, but that's not why I adored this book. I loved the simple stories about people living their lives. At some point, these lives were interrupted by the need for change. No one chooses revolution: your values just lead you to understand that you can no longer be silent. This idea was especially poignant in the chapter about Mina Saba, who was restricted in her expression by all sorts of moral tenets. Then her true morals shone through all the prescriptive layers.
This book exemplifies the endless sacrifices regular people like you and me make for a hope of a better future. It echoed a lot of my own feelings about change in my home country. I am in awe of the characters, or rather, real people described in its pages. Their courage and faith are inspiring.
There were two "plot twists" (can't really describe real events with this label...) that had me shaking. Life truly is the best director. Anand Gopal is a phenomenal conduit for its stories. To me, the retelling of every person felt respectful and caring.
This is a book I'll keep coming back to. I think everyone needs to read it
Every statement in this 500-page tome has been meticulously researched. The last 30 percent of the book is notes on methodology, corpora of sources, an index, a bibliography and statement-by-statement refences. To verify most claims, Anand Gopal and his team conducted 2,000 interviews. Each idea was cross-referenced among several sources. This is the way to do narrative nonfiction.
All this work is a feat, but that's not why I adored this book. I loved the simple stories about people living their lives. At some point, these lives were interrupted by the need for change. No one chooses revolution: your values just lead you to understand that you can no longer be silent. This idea was especially poignant in the chapter about Mina Saba, who was restricted in her expression by all sorts of moral tenets. Then her true morals shone through all the prescriptive layers.
This book exemplifies the endless sacrifices regular people like you and me make for a hope of a better future. It echoed a lot of my own feelings about change in my home country. I am in awe of the characters, or rather, real people described in its pages. Their courage and faith are inspiring.
There were two "plot twists" (can't really describe real events with this label...) that had me shaking. Life truly is the best director. Anand Gopal is a phenomenal conduit for its stories. To me, the retelling of every person felt respectful and caring.
This is a book I'll keep coming back to. I think everyone needs to read it
June 9, 2026
content - 10/10
style - 9.5/10
resonance - 11/10
wow…. wow. WOW!!!! wow….. how do you give a book a standing ovation?
recommended by my pal patrick radden-keefe, i purchased this humongous hardback out of blind faith and didn’t look back! a narrative non-fiction about the syrian revolution(s) and civil war, gopal follows a few key players during the war and expounds on their lived experience to paint a wider picture of the country’s tumultuous recent history.
i am absolutely blown away by how much of an undertaking this book was, with the thousands of interviews conducted and stories pieced together in warzones. i am even more in awe of the bravery of the countless syrians who were victims of history - players in the story told and untold. gopal does an amazing job of painting each person empathetically, clearly stating their positionality, influenced by larger political forces at play, while individually being capable of giving/receiving immense pain and/or kindness. following main players throughout this recent history also roots these larger political events in the every day human lives it affects, and larger questions about democracy intertwine with personal freedoms and desire. for example, the tension between freedom of religion (in this case, to practice islam) and feminism was fascinating to explore.
i was intimidated by the length of this book before beginning but it absolutely flew past, and i was gripped by every chapter. while i did find the second section on the revolutionary council (2012-2014) a little confusing, it was also really compelling in asking crucial questions about the public mob and its role in democracy. i also found it to be a really accessible yet in-depth introduction to the politics of the middle east which i’ve been keen to learn more about.
focussed on the town of manjib, the book also crucially follows the birth and rise of ISIS after the first revolution - and so many larger ideas of religion and the state, freedom and justice are thrown into question here. what is freedom without security? what is safety without freedom?
finally, gopal does a phenomenal job of wrapping things up at the end - with the second (and final) fall of the assad regime, syria’s story is far from over. and yet there is so much to learn from the human endeavour to fight for each other. with the rise of fascism, there is such danger in the narratives we believe about ourselves and the world we live in, in the way we justify our actions. on the flip side, a stubborn belief in one’s purpose can also gives us hope - it is the discernment of narratives that is vital.
10/10, so much nuance and brilliantly executed
style - 9.5/10
resonance - 11/10
wow…. wow. WOW!!!! wow….. how do you give a book a standing ovation?
recommended by my pal patrick radden-keefe, i purchased this humongous hardback out of blind faith and didn’t look back! a narrative non-fiction about the syrian revolution(s) and civil war, gopal follows a few key players during the war and expounds on their lived experience to paint a wider picture of the country’s tumultuous recent history.
i am absolutely blown away by how much of an undertaking this book was, with the thousands of interviews conducted and stories pieced together in warzones. i am even more in awe of the bravery of the countless syrians who were victims of history - players in the story told and untold. gopal does an amazing job of painting each person empathetically, clearly stating their positionality, influenced by larger political forces at play, while individually being capable of giving/receiving immense pain and/or kindness. following main players throughout this recent history also roots these larger political events in the every day human lives it affects, and larger questions about democracy intertwine with personal freedoms and desire. for example, the tension between freedom of religion (in this case, to practice islam) and feminism was fascinating to explore.
i was intimidated by the length of this book before beginning but it absolutely flew past, and i was gripped by every chapter. while i did find the second section on the revolutionary council (2012-2014) a little confusing, it was also really compelling in asking crucial questions about the public mob and its role in democracy. i also found it to be a really accessible yet in-depth introduction to the politics of the middle east which i’ve been keen to learn more about.
focussed on the town of manjib, the book also crucially follows the birth and rise of ISIS after the first revolution - and so many larger ideas of religion and the state, freedom and justice are thrown into question here. what is freedom without security? what is safety without freedom?
finally, gopal does a phenomenal job of wrapping things up at the end - with the second (and final) fall of the assad regime, syria’s story is far from over. and yet there is so much to learn from the human endeavour to fight for each other. with the rise of fascism, there is such danger in the narratives we believe about ourselves and the world we live in, in the way we justify our actions. on the flip side, a stubborn belief in one’s purpose can also gives us hope - it is the discernment of narratives that is vital.
10/10, so much nuance and brilliantly executed
July 30, 2026
Completely blown away by this. I was expecting something similar to Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich where this was a collection of experiences but really appreciated how we were tied to specific people throughout the book. This tells the story of revolution, counter-revolution after counter-revolution, all with the hope of everyday citizens to be free to live their lives as best as they can.
"Personal freedom is important, but when obsession with this one value justified allowing people to go hungry or live on the streets it mutates into a type of tyranny: the tyranny of the market"
This is something that is applicable to everyone, but I'm hesitant to try and draw too many lessons to apply to American society. It feels almost disrespectful to the masses of people who lost their homes, loved ones, and their own lives throughout the past few decades in Syria and the suffering they endured.
"Personal freedom is important, but when obsession with this one value justified allowing people to go hungry or live on the streets it mutates into a type of tyranny: the tyranny of the market"
This is something that is applicable to everyone, but I'm hesitant to try and draw too many lessons to apply to American society. It feels almost disrespectful to the masses of people who lost their homes, loved ones, and their own lives throughout the past few decades in Syria and the suffering they endured.
July 28, 2026
Phenomenal
February 27, 2026
Books that show the true side of what people have gone through, stories that may not have been heard before are heartwrenching. This was peoples real lives and history. There are so many individuals focused on in this book which got very confusing for me to try to remember who was who and what was whose story, but given that ALL of these people connect at some point and everyone’s stories are essential for others stories I understand that this is how the book had to be laid out. It’s always sad to see the terrible things people have gone through. I can only imagine how scary it must have been to be living in Syria at this time. The descriptions were so upsetting because this was peoples lives. And the fact that the effects of all that happened are still there today. This book was very sharp and hard hitting.
I was hoping for a happy ending as i got closer to completing the book. But real life and where we are now does not usually have happy endings.
This book contains so much research and it was all done with so much care. As you read you can feel the effort and importance put on this work to display what happened in a truthful light.
I was hoping for a happy ending as i got closer to completing the book. But real life and where we are now does not usually have happy endings.
This book contains so much research and it was all done with so much care. As you read you can feel the effort and importance put on this work to display what happened in a truthful light.
May 11, 2026
I really enjoyed everything I learned by reading this, but I wish that the pace was a bit more swift. Got bogged down in some places by how extraordinary the research is and it took me out of the narrative style.
Did Not Finish
March 4, 2026I received this ARC in exchange for a review. I unfortunately DNF’d it. This has nothing to do with the book and everything to do with my reading taste and the amount of information I can digest. I read 426 pages and realized I could not keep up with what was happening and what it means in the greater context of Syrian history.
Some context on me as a reader- I rarely read nonfiction but I enjoy historical fiction and I enjoy memoirs so I thought I would try at Days of Love and Rage. I did not realize it would be 592 pages….
Even with the high page count that I wasn’t mentally prepared for, these stories captured me as they are filled with resilience and a horrific look at the Syrian regimes. Unfortunately, I think some pre-reading may be required on the history of Syria up until the point of the revolutions. I felt a bit lost contextually until we are following the stories of the revolutionaries.
I was unable to follow all of the people we meet in the story. It was difficult to discern who to try to remember as they will come up again, or if they’re involved just in the current sentence.
Personally I would have loved a version of this that’s a bit shorter for my understanding, as I have no previous background in reading or learning about Syria.
Now despite this, my attention was held as the storytelling and writing are so compelling. I think that anyone who is interested should pick this book up and learn as much as they can from it. It’s easy to read and hold an attention span, and I’m sure readers who are comfortable with historical non-fiction would love this writing and story telling.
Some context on me as a reader- I rarely read nonfiction but I enjoy historical fiction and I enjoy memoirs so I thought I would try at Days of Love and Rage. I did not realize it would be 592 pages….
Even with the high page count that I wasn’t mentally prepared for, these stories captured me as they are filled with resilience and a horrific look at the Syrian regimes. Unfortunately, I think some pre-reading may be required on the history of Syria up until the point of the revolutions. I felt a bit lost contextually until we are following the stories of the revolutionaries.
I was unable to follow all of the people we meet in the story. It was difficult to discern who to try to remember as they will come up again, or if they’re involved just in the current sentence.
Personally I would have loved a version of this that’s a bit shorter for my understanding, as I have no previous background in reading or learning about Syria.
Now despite this, my attention was held as the storytelling and writing are so compelling. I think that anyone who is interested should pick this book up and learn as much as they can from it. It’s easy to read and hold an attention span, and I’m sure readers who are comfortable with historical non-fiction would love this writing and story telling.
July 21, 2026
Syria is a country that has been at war with itself for almost fifteen years. It survived the Assad family which ruled Syria for more than five decades. Hafez al-Assad seized power in a 1970 military coup, creating a brutal, authoritarian regime. Following his death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency. Bashar, who was educated in England raised hopes that his reign would be more liberal than his father. But that was not to be. He callous rule would foster the brutal suppression of the 2011 protests which triggered a civil war. This resulted in a government that sought to retain power at any cost and committing incalculable atrocities against its own people including the use of chemical weapons. There were a number of rebel groups that sought to overthrow Assad, including extremist factions and the rise of ISIS. In his new book, journalist Anand Gopal creates a far reaching, disturbing, and novelistic account of the Syrian Civil War entitled; DAYS OF LOVE AND RAGE: A STORY OF ORDINARY PEOPLE FORGING A REVOLUTION.
Gopal focuses the northern Syrian city of Manbij and a small group of people who developed a movement to try and overthrow the Bashir al-Assad dictatorship. The author collected over 2000 interviews, viewed hundreds of war-time videos and read a myriad of books to tell the story of six ambitious people from a remote provincial town that many Syrians have never heard of until these rebels helped unleash a war and the revolution that encompassed it. Among the rebels are a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to a misogynistic culture, and a worker who risks everything in the hope of establishing a democracy.
Gopal’s work provides the reader an insightful approach to the horror that was Syria as people tried to overthrow the Assad regime, the ensuing civil war that created many factions, many of which turned against each other, and produced another brutal dictatorship in the form of the Islamic State of Syria. Gopal focuses on a group of individuals who lived in Manbij, a strategic city in the northeast Aleppo Governorate of northern Syria, located roughly 30 kilometers west of the Euphrates River and 12 kilometers from the Turkish border. Historically an ancient and diverse hub, the city became part of the battleground that was Syria during this period. The fighting produced a Revolutionary Council to govern the city made up of elites which led to an opposition under the heading of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) which believed that the needs of the masses were not being addressed. The factionalism that eventually evolved pitted friends and relatives against each other as the fabric of the city fell to extreme poverty and violence.
The key characters include Ibrahim Kasem, who originated from the village of Little Hyena where his family worked on the land until they learned of the construction of a dam that would submerge his farm and fostered a rage within. Kasem and his family would move to Manbij as a laborer where his anger increased against far away forces he did not understand. Nasan Fefi, lived in Manbij and loved to read and write poetry. He would be arrested and tortured by the Assad regime and was sent to the notorious Palmyra Prison where he was offered his freedom in return for spying for the regime. Abdul Qader Oseb, a Kurd who lived in a hamlet near Manbij was known as Abel O. A laborer and karate expert he left home very young and returned when his father died taking over his business. He would be sucked into dealing with loan sharks who got the regime police to pressure him. Mina Saba , a teacher would try and improve the condition for women within an Islamist society and will eventually create a women’s freedom movement. Gopal offers wonderful chapters describing these characters and how their experiences eventually brought them together to overthrow the regime in Manbij. Gopal explains the dual nature of Syrian society where a small rich class centered in Damascus supported Assad and the smaller cities and villages throughout the country that resented the regime. Over the years poverty and drought were not dealt with by the regime resulting in a lack of bread and other necessities. By 2008 and the world economic crisis would devastate the Syrian economy.
In February 2011, the Arab Spring had broken out in Tunisia and would spread to Egypt giving people in Syria false hope for a better life. Men like Oday al-Hema had always supported Assad because of the government’s modernization program and services it offered. However, when the masses in the south did not experience any benefits torture, beatings, and murder on the part of the regime turned Oday against the government. Soon demonstrations against the Baath Party headquarters in Damascus broke out.
Gopal does an effective job weaving aspects of Syrian history into his narrative to highlight contemporary events. For example, the massacre of demonstrators at Daraa is juxtaposed against Hafez el-Assad’s destruction of Hama were 50-60,000 people were killed. By 2012 a massacre in Homs and reports of other massacres and shootings by regime soldiers helped radicalize many who had been supporters of Asad. Among those are Oday and Abel O. These men would ally with others to create “flash demonstrations” against the government resulting in their arrest. Gopal goes on to describe in detail the horrors faced by these men in Assad’s Gulag and how prisoners were forced to depend on each other for survival.
As the narrative continues Gopal introduces more characters who greatly impacted the overthrow of the regime in Manbij. Abdul Hadi Bisher, a former promising soccer player was convinced by Abel O. and Oday to join a protest movement against the government. Another ally of this developing group was Abdul Hadi would be arrested by security forces as was Oday and others were they would be tortured and forced to admit they were terrorists to gain their release. Increasingly, more protests developed and a burgeoning military component against the regime was formed. The end result is the regime is over in Manbij is overthrown leading to the 2011 Syrian uprising in the city. Gopal will chronicle a remarkable 18-month democratic experiment before being torn apart by political polarization and economic inequality.
When the citizens of Manbij overthrew the regime, they created their own grassroots system from the ground up. For a brief window, this included citizen assemblies, free civic organizations, and local newspapers to replace forty years of authoritarian silence. The problem that developed was that people grew tired of waiting for things to improve as bread prices skyrocketed and the masses blamed the new Revolutionary Council as being elitist and not addressing the economic needs of people and focusing too much on creating overly democratic institutions. This will spark an opposition which will split Manbij and create an opening for the arrival of ISIS by 2013.
Gopal will trace the fighting against the Assad regime and the horrors it perpetrated against the Syrian people. The situation was exacerbated by the defacto embargo on weapons by the Western powers who feared radical Islamists and terrorist groups benefiting from their aid as opposed to damaging Assad. With the Arab Spring, the Gulf states feared for their own regimes. As Iran sent Hezbollah to fight to save the Assad government the situation in the small cities and villages deteriorated further. Finally, Jordan and Turkey would begin to arm the rebels. The Obama administration did little and even after he announced a “Red Line” if Assad resorted to chemical weapons – once sarin gas was used Obama did nothing. This was after a period when the CIA worked to make sure rebel groups did not acquire lethal weapons.
Within Manbij a civil war of its own broke out between elements of the Revolutionary Council and the RYM over who was in charge of the city. Both sides were guilty for intransigence in trying to reach a settlement in what can be seen as a class war as Abel O upon reflecting on events compared life in prison to life dealing with the split between the Revolutionary Council and the RYM. The debate according to Gopal centered on what type of government Manbij should have. The author develops the arguments over democracy, freedom, and a more authoritarian rule. The issues of secularism on Islamism come center stage as Islamists argue that secularism is what led to the brutal Assad regime and an inability of the Revolutionary Council to meet the needs of the people.
As these debates and conflict proliferate Gopal does an exceptional job discussing how ISIS was able to ingratiate itself into the Manbij community. However, once some of their efforts emerged the people of Manbij threw them out only having them return a month later taking over the city as the price of bread skyrocketed. ISIS would take over the RYM and the result was a split between Abdul Hadi and Oday and their followers highlighting the convoluted political situation in Manbij that was in the background throughout 2012 and 2014. The factionalism that was on display is a major theme of the book and a reason for the devastation caused by the Assad regime and the arrival of ISIS.
One of the many strengths of Gopal’s work is his description of what it was like to live under ISIS rule. He is particularly effective employing Mina’s experiences in dealing with day to day life under extreme Islamist rule i.e., the almost hourly arrival of trucks with loudspeakers blaring the rules that one must live by under the new ISIS regime. Gopal explained that people came to follow ISIS because they needed security and were willing to trade for freedom. The Islamic State achieved what the Revolutionary Council could not. For Oday, people succumbed to a collective delusion.
As Gopal describes the fighting for Manbij in 2014 as American backed Kurdish forces and other rebel groups fought ISIS he delves into Oday’s seizure. Once he is taken he is tortured by ISIS which is emblematic of the split between the old revolutionary embodied in Oday and his former compatriot, Abdul Hadi. The author describes Oday’s courage and unshakeable commitment to freedom which eventually results in ISIS’ defeat which at the same time chronicle’s Abel O’s fight for survival under a reign of bombs. The most interesting character at this point is Abdul Hadi who founded the RYM and morphed into an ISIS leader. As the slaughter and bombs he experiences extreme guilt for his life’s path because of his belief in the Caliphate. Gopal portrays these friends on different sides of the revolution who have come full circle. It is a morose description of what war can do to friendship and commitment to the same cause.
Charles Glass’ review in the March 5, 2026, entitled, “This Story of Ordinary Syrians Who Fought Tyranny is a Masterpiece” in the New York Times captures the essence of what Gopal achieved in his excellent monograph that at times reads like a novel. As Glass writes he captures the dichotomy the people of Manbij faced; “As Gopal follows his characters around the city streets, he interlaces personal dramas with political conflicts, hopeful gatherings of aspiring democrats with the torture of young idealists, citizens uniting for liberty with families torn apart, the poor fighting for a share of resources against extortionate merchants, of government apparatchiks switching allegiances to join the revolution, of local soccer and karate heroes finding themselves on opposite sides of the barricades, of hope as much as despair. Many of the young people who emerged as revolutionary leaders were at first loyal followers of Assad, of whom they said, “Our president is a good man.” Government attacks on peaceful protesters requesting simple reforms turned them into rebels determined to rid the country of a leader and a system they blamed for the wretchedness of their lives. Gopal plays fair, pointing out that Baathist rule provided the peasants of Manbij with electricity, education, roads, health care and land reform that took them out of feudal bondage. In exchange for security, all they sacrificed was freedom.”
Glass accurately evaluates Gopal’s monograph as he brings Manbij to its present situation; “As they had fought Assad, the people of Manbij turned against ISIS and, with the assistance of the Free Syrian Army and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (S.D.F.), expelled it in 2016. The largely Kurdish S.D.F. proved as repressive in Manbij as Assad had been. “The Syrian Democratic Forces were democratic in name only,” Gopal writes. “There was no freedom of speech or assembly, no free and fair elections. The government in Manbij was a dictatorship.”
Politics can be a dirty business, but in Days of Love and Rage, Gopal makes the enduring optimism of his subjects movingly clear. For 40 years, everything from labor unions to chess clubs had been subject to the dictatorship. “Yet when the people of Manbij overthrew the government, independent councils and assemblies and newspapers and charities and unions appeared overnight,” Gopal writes. “In other words, the people of Manbij started doing politics.”
Despite falling under tyranny again, the city’s inhabitants learned from their mistakes and banished the subservience to power inherited over four centuries of Ottoman rule, 26 years of French occupation and, since 1949, local dictatorship.
When Assad fled to Moscow in December 2024, ending the civil war, Gopal and many of the town’s exiles returned to Manbij. A new council, Gopal writes, “appointed officials who had been tainted by corruption allegations during the revolution.” The people protested, marching and chanting in the streets and squares. “They came out simply because it is who they are,” Gopal concludes, “because of what has been awakened, because of the fire that cannot be put out.”
Gopal focuses the northern Syrian city of Manbij and a small group of people who developed a movement to try and overthrow the Bashir al-Assad dictatorship. The author collected over 2000 interviews, viewed hundreds of war-time videos and read a myriad of books to tell the story of six ambitious people from a remote provincial town that many Syrians have never heard of until these rebels helped unleash a war and the revolution that encompassed it. Among the rebels are a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to a misogynistic culture, and a worker who risks everything in the hope of establishing a democracy.
Gopal’s work provides the reader an insightful approach to the horror that was Syria as people tried to overthrow the Assad regime, the ensuing civil war that created many factions, many of which turned against each other, and produced another brutal dictatorship in the form of the Islamic State of Syria. Gopal focuses on a group of individuals who lived in Manbij, a strategic city in the northeast Aleppo Governorate of northern Syria, located roughly 30 kilometers west of the Euphrates River and 12 kilometers from the Turkish border. Historically an ancient and diverse hub, the city became part of the battleground that was Syria during this period. The fighting produced a Revolutionary Council to govern the city made up of elites which led to an opposition under the heading of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) which believed that the needs of the masses were not being addressed. The factionalism that eventually evolved pitted friends and relatives against each other as the fabric of the city fell to extreme poverty and violence.
The key characters include Ibrahim Kasem, who originated from the village of Little Hyena where his family worked on the land until they learned of the construction of a dam that would submerge his farm and fostered a rage within. Kasem and his family would move to Manbij as a laborer where his anger increased against far away forces he did not understand. Nasan Fefi, lived in Manbij and loved to read and write poetry. He would be arrested and tortured by the Assad regime and was sent to the notorious Palmyra Prison where he was offered his freedom in return for spying for the regime. Abdul Qader Oseb, a Kurd who lived in a hamlet near Manbij was known as Abel O. A laborer and karate expert he left home very young and returned when his father died taking over his business. He would be sucked into dealing with loan sharks who got the regime police to pressure him. Mina Saba , a teacher would try and improve the condition for women within an Islamist society and will eventually create a women’s freedom movement. Gopal offers wonderful chapters describing these characters and how their experiences eventually brought them together to overthrow the regime in Manbij. Gopal explains the dual nature of Syrian society where a small rich class centered in Damascus supported Assad and the smaller cities and villages throughout the country that resented the regime. Over the years poverty and drought were not dealt with by the regime resulting in a lack of bread and other necessities. By 2008 and the world economic crisis would devastate the Syrian economy.
In February 2011, the Arab Spring had broken out in Tunisia and would spread to Egypt giving people in Syria false hope for a better life. Men like Oday al-Hema had always supported Assad because of the government’s modernization program and services it offered. However, when the masses in the south did not experience any benefits torture, beatings, and murder on the part of the regime turned Oday against the government. Soon demonstrations against the Baath Party headquarters in Damascus broke out.
Gopal does an effective job weaving aspects of Syrian history into his narrative to highlight contemporary events. For example, the massacre of demonstrators at Daraa is juxtaposed against Hafez el-Assad’s destruction of Hama were 50-60,000 people were killed. By 2012 a massacre in Homs and reports of other massacres and shootings by regime soldiers helped radicalize many who had been supporters of Asad. Among those are Oday and Abel O. These men would ally with others to create “flash demonstrations” against the government resulting in their arrest. Gopal goes on to describe in detail the horrors faced by these men in Assad’s Gulag and how prisoners were forced to depend on each other for survival.
As the narrative continues Gopal introduces more characters who greatly impacted the overthrow of the regime in Manbij. Abdul Hadi Bisher, a former promising soccer player was convinced by Abel O. and Oday to join a protest movement against the government. Another ally of this developing group was Abdul Hadi would be arrested by security forces as was Oday and others were they would be tortured and forced to admit they were terrorists to gain their release. Increasingly, more protests developed and a burgeoning military component against the regime was formed. The end result is the regime is over in Manbij is overthrown leading to the 2011 Syrian uprising in the city. Gopal will chronicle a remarkable 18-month democratic experiment before being torn apart by political polarization and economic inequality.
When the citizens of Manbij overthrew the regime, they created their own grassroots system from the ground up. For a brief window, this included citizen assemblies, free civic organizations, and local newspapers to replace forty years of authoritarian silence. The problem that developed was that people grew tired of waiting for things to improve as bread prices skyrocketed and the masses blamed the new Revolutionary Council as being elitist and not addressing the economic needs of people and focusing too much on creating overly democratic institutions. This will spark an opposition which will split Manbij and create an opening for the arrival of ISIS by 2013.
Gopal will trace the fighting against the Assad regime and the horrors it perpetrated against the Syrian people. The situation was exacerbated by the defacto embargo on weapons by the Western powers who feared radical Islamists and terrorist groups benefiting from their aid as opposed to damaging Assad. With the Arab Spring, the Gulf states feared for their own regimes. As Iran sent Hezbollah to fight to save the Assad government the situation in the small cities and villages deteriorated further. Finally, Jordan and Turkey would begin to arm the rebels. The Obama administration did little and even after he announced a “Red Line” if Assad resorted to chemical weapons – once sarin gas was used Obama did nothing. This was after a period when the CIA worked to make sure rebel groups did not acquire lethal weapons.
Within Manbij a civil war of its own broke out between elements of the Revolutionary Council and the RYM over who was in charge of the city. Both sides were guilty for intransigence in trying to reach a settlement in what can be seen as a class war as Abel O upon reflecting on events compared life in prison to life dealing with the split between the Revolutionary Council and the RYM. The debate according to Gopal centered on what type of government Manbij should have. The author develops the arguments over democracy, freedom, and a more authoritarian rule. The issues of secularism on Islamism come center stage as Islamists argue that secularism is what led to the brutal Assad regime and an inability of the Revolutionary Council to meet the needs of the people.
As these debates and conflict proliferate Gopal does an exceptional job discussing how ISIS was able to ingratiate itself into the Manbij community. However, once some of their efforts emerged the people of Manbij threw them out only having them return a month later taking over the city as the price of bread skyrocketed. ISIS would take over the RYM and the result was a split between Abdul Hadi and Oday and their followers highlighting the convoluted political situation in Manbij that was in the background throughout 2012 and 2014. The factionalism that was on display is a major theme of the book and a reason for the devastation caused by the Assad regime and the arrival of ISIS.
One of the many strengths of Gopal’s work is his description of what it was like to live under ISIS rule. He is particularly effective employing Mina’s experiences in dealing with day to day life under extreme Islamist rule i.e., the almost hourly arrival of trucks with loudspeakers blaring the rules that one must live by under the new ISIS regime. Gopal explained that people came to follow ISIS because they needed security and were willing to trade for freedom. The Islamic State achieved what the Revolutionary Council could not. For Oday, people succumbed to a collective delusion.
As Gopal describes the fighting for Manbij in 2014 as American backed Kurdish forces and other rebel groups fought ISIS he delves into Oday’s seizure. Once he is taken he is tortured by ISIS which is emblematic of the split between the old revolutionary embodied in Oday and his former compatriot, Abdul Hadi. The author describes Oday’s courage and unshakeable commitment to freedom which eventually results in ISIS’ defeat which at the same time chronicle’s Abel O’s fight for survival under a reign of bombs. The most interesting character at this point is Abdul Hadi who founded the RYM and morphed into an ISIS leader. As the slaughter and bombs he experiences extreme guilt for his life’s path because of his belief in the Caliphate. Gopal portrays these friends on different sides of the revolution who have come full circle. It is a morose description of what war can do to friendship and commitment to the same cause.
Charles Glass’ review in the March 5, 2026, entitled, “This Story of Ordinary Syrians Who Fought Tyranny is a Masterpiece” in the New York Times captures the essence of what Gopal achieved in his excellent monograph that at times reads like a novel. As Glass writes he captures the dichotomy the people of Manbij faced; “As Gopal follows his characters around the city streets, he interlaces personal dramas with political conflicts, hopeful gatherings of aspiring democrats with the torture of young idealists, citizens uniting for liberty with families torn apart, the poor fighting for a share of resources against extortionate merchants, of government apparatchiks switching allegiances to join the revolution, of local soccer and karate heroes finding themselves on opposite sides of the barricades, of hope as much as despair. Many of the young people who emerged as revolutionary leaders were at first loyal followers of Assad, of whom they said, “Our president is a good man.” Government attacks on peaceful protesters requesting simple reforms turned them into rebels determined to rid the country of a leader and a system they blamed for the wretchedness of their lives. Gopal plays fair, pointing out that Baathist rule provided the peasants of Manbij with electricity, education, roads, health care and land reform that took them out of feudal bondage. In exchange for security, all they sacrificed was freedom.”
Glass accurately evaluates Gopal’s monograph as he brings Manbij to its present situation; “As they had fought Assad, the people of Manbij turned against ISIS and, with the assistance of the Free Syrian Army and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (S.D.F.), expelled it in 2016. The largely Kurdish S.D.F. proved as repressive in Manbij as Assad had been. “The Syrian Democratic Forces were democratic in name only,” Gopal writes. “There was no freedom of speech or assembly, no free and fair elections. The government in Manbij was a dictatorship.”
Politics can be a dirty business, but in Days of Love and Rage, Gopal makes the enduring optimism of his subjects movingly clear. For 40 years, everything from labor unions to chess clubs had been subject to the dictatorship. “Yet when the people of Manbij overthrew the government, independent councils and assemblies and newspapers and charities and unions appeared overnight,” Gopal writes. “In other words, the people of Manbij started doing politics.”
Despite falling under tyranny again, the city’s inhabitants learned from their mistakes and banished the subservience to power inherited over four centuries of Ottoman rule, 26 years of French occupation and, since 1949, local dictatorship.
When Assad fled to Moscow in December 2024, ending the civil war, Gopal and many of the town’s exiles returned to Manbij. A new council, Gopal writes, “appointed officials who had been tainted by corruption allegations during the revolution.” The people protested, marching and chanting in the streets and squares. “They came out simply because it is who they are,” Gopal concludes, “because of what has been awakened, because of the fire that cannot be put out.”
August 30, 2026
an incredible tour de force of investigative journalism. through the lives of six Syrian revolutionaries, Anand Gopal and his team of researchers show us how the story of the Syrian revolution matters for our understanding of democracy and what it means to be human. I knew the basic outlines of the Syrian civil war but lacked a deeper understanding of why the revolution failed and what paved the way for ISIS, and later the PKK. while these factors are multifarious and complex, what I loved about this book was how it narrativised this through people's lives and political journeys. it dramatised these events in relation to everyday experiences and aspirations, but also in terms of how they impinged upon people's understandings of political ideas. the characters in this book wrestled with the big questions of theory and practice—what kind of freedom is one that results in the tyranny of the market? what sort of justice is one that subjugates this life to the next? and what is the value of bread when one does not also have roses? this story taught me a lot about the human desire to be free, to live collectively, and to search for meaning. and more than anything, it underlined the perils of resentment, and importance of hope over despair—even when it is foolhardy.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 31, 2026
This is a horrific story of the Syrian civil war playing out over a 14-year period in the small city of Manbij in NW Syria. The author focuses on a small core of men and women fighting for personal freedom and dignity through protests, work strikes, and small acts of disobedience. Their sacrifices and suffering are heartbreaking as they battle the Assad regime, corrupt liberation groups, Islamic State administrators and religious police, Kurdish fighters, and finally American “liberators” with their indiscriminate bombing. There are no good guys in this story, only the self-serving interests of megalomaniacal leaders trying to consolidate power as Syrian families struggle to survive in this unmitigated hellscape.
September 9, 2026
Heartbreaking, hopeful, incredible storytelling.
"If tyranny is where democracies go to die, then inequality is the cause of death"
"If tyranny is where democracies go to die, then inequality is the cause of death"
September 19, 2026
I have too many thoughts for a post right now. For right now, I will share: this nonfiction’s structure and storytelling are important to all of us.
September 22, 2026
Masterpiece
July 9, 2026
This was 4 stars for me but rounding up if it gets the book some more readership.
Assad will rot in hell forever.
Assad will rot in hell forever.
July 12, 2026
A powerful, gripping, and thorough look at modern Syria through the microcosm of the city of Manbij and the lives of citizens who stood up for democracy and self-governance during the 2011 revolution against the Assad regime, embarked on a bold democratic experiment, and then survived the Syrian civil war. At times a very tough read between the descriptions of torture and war and some admittedly dense writing (though never so much as to become inaccessible), but through all of that, Gopal's work is a triumph, especially for readers who appreciate detailed methodology to create a balanced recollection of events. Even though Days of Love and Rage has been out less than six months as I write this, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that this one is going to be considered a modern classic of journalistic and historical writing. Putting this on my best of 2026 list without hesitation.
If I'm being honest though, I'm very surprised this book made it to print without a single map of Syria or the Manbij region in its pages. Yes, I'm aware it's 2026 and many readers have smartphones handy to pull up maps, but it's the principle of the thing.
If I'm being honest though, I'm very surprised this book made it to print without a single map of Syria or the Manbij region in its pages. Yes, I'm aware it's 2026 and many readers have smartphones handy to pull up maps, but it's the principle of the thing.
April 29, 2026
10/10. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
Days of Love and Rage follows several Syrians as they pursue democracy, dignity, and freedom in different ways during the Syrian revolution. It’s an incredible portrait of how revolutions begin, how they unravel, and how even noble causes can consume people.
What makes this book special is that it works on every level. It’s deeply informative, emotionally powerful, and impossible to put down. Gopal explains a complicated conflict through individual lives, which makes everything hit harder than a standard history book ever could.
The people in this book are not presented as heroes or villains. They are complicated, flawed, brave, fearful, hopeful human beings trying to survive history as it crashes down around them.
It also just reads beautifully. There were multiple times I forgot I was reading nonfiction because it has the pacing and intensity of a great novel.
I’ve never read a book that taught me so much, moved me so much, and held my attention so completely at the same time.
An all-time masterpiece.
Days of Love and Rage follows several Syrians as they pursue democracy, dignity, and freedom in different ways during the Syrian revolution. It’s an incredible portrait of how revolutions begin, how they unravel, and how even noble causes can consume people.
What makes this book special is that it works on every level. It’s deeply informative, emotionally powerful, and impossible to put down. Gopal explains a complicated conflict through individual lives, which makes everything hit harder than a standard history book ever could.
The people in this book are not presented as heroes or villains. They are complicated, flawed, brave, fearful, hopeful human beings trying to survive history as it crashes down around them.
It also just reads beautifully. There were multiple times I forgot I was reading nonfiction because it has the pacing and intensity of a great novel.
I’ve never read a book that taught me so much, moved me so much, and held my attention so completely at the same time.
An all-time masterpiece.
March 4, 2026
This is a nonfiction masterpiece from one of the finest journalists working today.
"Days of Love and Rage" is about the Syrian Civil War in the same way that "Animal Farm" is about cows and ducks. The book is deeply rooted in a certain place and time, to be sure, but its story illuminates deep and universal questions about democracy, human society, freedom, and class struggle. Anand Gopal has travelled the world and witnessed hardship and conflict at its worst. This book is clearly the distillation of the hard wisdom he has gleaned through the experience.
The story itself unfolds with the energy of a great novel. We meet extraordinary people who are rendered with the care and detail of great literature. There is Abdul Os, a striving Kurdish shop owner who becomes a community leader; Hasan Nefi, the poet and revolutionary who suffers in a dungeon; Oday al-Hema, an ambitious and restless young Syrian who can't seem to accept the world as it is; and Mina Saba, a woman oppressed by a world of "honor" who makes the shattering decision to join protests during the Arab Spring.
These stories are intertwined in the city of Manbij, a place that comes alive with the narrative strength of Dickens' London. Manbij is a place of tradition and order, until the arrival of the Syrian revolution. Gopal tells the remarkable story of Manbij over several years as its citizens defy an authoritarian ruler, form a democratic society, and then fall under the power of theocratic tyranny.
The story here is timeless, the story of how people struggle to manifest that thing we call "freedom" through the messy construction of committees, revolutionary councils and civic groups. Gopal's telling of the story is studded with insights that stop you cold, insights that feel not only relevant to our moment, but urgent. The first revolutionary council of Manbij, for example, is run by upper-class professionals who seem immune to the pressing needs of the poor. "As its first act, the body pledged not to tackle (rising) prices but to 'restore the beauty and charm of our streets' by hiring street cleaners," Gopal writes. It sounded like a post-mortem of a recent American presidential election. The events that followed in Majbij were chillingly resonant as well.
The writing here is nothing short of poetic. Describing the pain of families whose loved ones disappeared in the war—whether to prison camps or combat—Gopal writes: "The missing were legion. Their presence, in their perpetual absence, loomed over daily life, like a huge army encampment outside town, just past the hills, beyond the reach of ordinary mortals."
We are lucky to have this monumental work from such an important writer. This is the kind of book that comes along once a decade, at best. It will certainly be read for decades to come.
"Days of Love and Rage" is about the Syrian Civil War in the same way that "Animal Farm" is about cows and ducks. The book is deeply rooted in a certain place and time, to be sure, but its story illuminates deep and universal questions about democracy, human society, freedom, and class struggle. Anand Gopal has travelled the world and witnessed hardship and conflict at its worst. This book is clearly the distillation of the hard wisdom he has gleaned through the experience.
The story itself unfolds with the energy of a great novel. We meet extraordinary people who are rendered with the care and detail of great literature. There is Abdul Os, a striving Kurdish shop owner who becomes a community leader; Hasan Nefi, the poet and revolutionary who suffers in a dungeon; Oday al-Hema, an ambitious and restless young Syrian who can't seem to accept the world as it is; and Mina Saba, a woman oppressed by a world of "honor" who makes the shattering decision to join protests during the Arab Spring.
These stories are intertwined in the city of Manbij, a place that comes alive with the narrative strength of Dickens' London. Manbij is a place of tradition and order, until the arrival of the Syrian revolution. Gopal tells the remarkable story of Manbij over several years as its citizens defy an authoritarian ruler, form a democratic society, and then fall under the power of theocratic tyranny.
The story here is timeless, the story of how people struggle to manifest that thing we call "freedom" through the messy construction of committees, revolutionary councils and civic groups. Gopal's telling of the story is studded with insights that stop you cold, insights that feel not only relevant to our moment, but urgent. The first revolutionary council of Manbij, for example, is run by upper-class professionals who seem immune to the pressing needs of the poor. "As its first act, the body pledged not to tackle (rising) prices but to 'restore the beauty and charm of our streets' by hiring street cleaners," Gopal writes. It sounded like a post-mortem of a recent American presidential election. The events that followed in Majbij were chillingly resonant as well.
The writing here is nothing short of poetic. Describing the pain of families whose loved ones disappeared in the war—whether to prison camps or combat—Gopal writes: "The missing were legion. Their presence, in their perpetual absence, loomed over daily life, like a huge army encampment outside town, just past the hills, beyond the reach of ordinary mortals."
We are lucky to have this monumental work from such an important writer. This is the kind of book that comes along once a decade, at best. It will certainly be read for decades to come.
June 12, 2026
Days of Love and Rage by Anand Gopal, Pulitzer Prize finalist and contributor to The New Yorker, is one of the most important books I have ever read. Among the hundreds of books I have encountered, this extraordinary work stands apart. Through deeply immersive narrative nonfiction, Gopal brings to life the courage, sacrifice, and determination of Syrian revolutionaries struggling against dictatorship, restoring humanity to a story too often reduced to headlines and geopolitics.
Few books have left such an indelible mark on my heart and soul. It is not merely a remarkable work of political nonfiction; it is a profound testament to human dignity, resistance, and hope. This is a book I will continue recommending for years to come.
In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew a brutal dictatorship. For the next eighteen months, many of the citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.
Days of Love and Rage details the powerfully intimate narratives of the men and women who led this struggle, and who experienced the highs of camaraderie and the lows of betrayal. Among them: a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, and a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality.
This book is an eye-opening read. It sheds light on the struggles of ordinary people in the Middle East and provides valuable context for understanding some of the defining events of our time. Through its pages, the stories of resistance against tyranny, the plight of Syrian refugees, the rise and fall of ISIS, and the geopolitical contest among global powers become more than headlines—they become deeply human experiences.
Shocking, heartbreaking, riveting, and powerfully written, this 500-page book feels like Syria's gift to humanity. Knowing that these are real-life stories made me realize how privileged many of us are to live in places where democracy is often taken for granted. How easy it is to overlook the value of freedoms we never had to sacrifice our lives for. These stories are a reminder of what it means to fight unwaveringly for a better world, even in the face of unimaginable hardship.
I will never forget one concept from this book: 'Radical Hope': the idea that no matter the disaster in front of you, goodness is possible, even if it is impossible to know how and when it might arrive.
Spoilers:
I’m deeply heartbroken for so many of these heroes, yet I’m left with nothing but awe, admiration, and profound respect for their courage. To willingly offer their lives in the face of such atrocity is almost beyond comprehension. I was especially moved by the story of young Oday Al-Hema—what an extraordinary soul.
Few books have left such an indelible mark on my heart and soul. It is not merely a remarkable work of political nonfiction; it is a profound testament to human dignity, resistance, and hope. This is a book I will continue recommending for years to come.
In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew a brutal dictatorship. For the next eighteen months, many of the citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.
Days of Love and Rage details the powerfully intimate narratives of the men and women who led this struggle, and who experienced the highs of camaraderie and the lows of betrayal. Among them: a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, and a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality.
This book is an eye-opening read. It sheds light on the struggles of ordinary people in the Middle East and provides valuable context for understanding some of the defining events of our time. Through its pages, the stories of resistance against tyranny, the plight of Syrian refugees, the rise and fall of ISIS, and the geopolitical contest among global powers become more than headlines—they become deeply human experiences.
Shocking, heartbreaking, riveting, and powerfully written, this 500-page book feels like Syria's gift to humanity. Knowing that these are real-life stories made me realize how privileged many of us are to live in places where democracy is often taken for granted. How easy it is to overlook the value of freedoms we never had to sacrifice our lives for. These stories are a reminder of what it means to fight unwaveringly for a better world, even in the face of unimaginable hardship.
I will never forget one concept from this book: 'Radical Hope': the idea that no matter the disaster in front of you, goodness is possible, even if it is impossible to know how and when it might arrive.
Spoilers:
I’m deeply heartbroken for so many of these heroes, yet I’m left with nothing but awe, admiration, and profound respect for their courage. To willingly offer their lives in the face of such atrocity is almost beyond comprehension. I was especially moved by the story of young Oday Al-Hema—what an extraordinary soul.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 3, 2026
I will read anything Anand Gopal writes. He has to be one of the best journalists of our time. I don't know how he extracts so much detail out of his interview subjects, nevermind where he finds people with such incredible stories. One almost can't believe this stuff is real; it's so movie-like. Which is not to say the book's virtue is in entertainment value. This is a tour de force that covers the full sweep of human experience as it was lived in a city in Syria during the civil war. We get a richly vivid depiction of peasant life, the promise and tragedy of third world modernization, and the process of democratic revolution from its inssipient protest phase to outright rebellion to seizure of power.
As the book's subtitle suggests, this is a story of ordinary people who struggle to become conscious of themselves as free, take responsibility for their own fate, and figure out how to organize their lives without guidance from any higher authority. And doing all of that while trying to hold a fractious city together and being relentlessly bombed by Assad's warplanes. Their democratic experiment didn't survive more than two years, though, not because of external threats so much as the internal contradiction between liberalism, or more specifically capitalism, and formal democracy. This book might be considered a case study in how they come apart, and why, as a result, religious fundamentalism appears as such an attractive remedy, even or especially to the least religious persons. The Islamic State is given an admirably objective portrayal; its hideous oppression of women, public executions and petty fanaticism are not hidden, but neither are all of its appeals--the effective governance, provision of public services, disappearance of crime and corruption, instilling of a sense of moral definitiveness, and so on. The Western caricature of ISIS is dispensed with in favor of an examination of the group's responsiveness to felt contradictions in the social order, and compared to the quasi-apocalyptic nightmare wrought on the city's civilian population by the US-backed SDF in its "liberation" of Manbij (Vietnam's "we had to destroy the city to save it" yet again), one isn't even so sure they wouldn't have been better off continuing to struggle for freedom under Islamic tyranny instead.
These are all serious political matters, but the book has just as much to say about more ordinary human questions of love and loyalty, family, art, philosophy, and so forth. It is also frequently quite funny, and the final hundred pages or so left me in tears, not for humour but for heartbreak. Point is, read this book. And read Gopal's other amazing work: No Good Men Among the Living. It is essentially the same treatment for Afghanistan.
As the book's subtitle suggests, this is a story of ordinary people who struggle to become conscious of themselves as free, take responsibility for their own fate, and figure out how to organize their lives without guidance from any higher authority. And doing all of that while trying to hold a fractious city together and being relentlessly bombed by Assad's warplanes. Their democratic experiment didn't survive more than two years, though, not because of external threats so much as the internal contradiction between liberalism, or more specifically capitalism, and formal democracy. This book might be considered a case study in how they come apart, and why, as a result, religious fundamentalism appears as such an attractive remedy, even or especially to the least religious persons. The Islamic State is given an admirably objective portrayal; its hideous oppression of women, public executions and petty fanaticism are not hidden, but neither are all of its appeals--the effective governance, provision of public services, disappearance of crime and corruption, instilling of a sense of moral definitiveness, and so on. The Western caricature of ISIS is dispensed with in favor of an examination of the group's responsiveness to felt contradictions in the social order, and compared to the quasi-apocalyptic nightmare wrought on the city's civilian population by the US-backed SDF in its "liberation" of Manbij (Vietnam's "we had to destroy the city to save it" yet again), one isn't even so sure they wouldn't have been better off continuing to struggle for freedom under Islamic tyranny instead.
These are all serious political matters, but the book has just as much to say about more ordinary human questions of love and loyalty, family, art, philosophy, and so forth. It is also frequently quite funny, and the final hundred pages or so left me in tears, not for humour but for heartbreak. Point is, read this book. And read Gopal's other amazing work: No Good Men Among the Living. It is essentially the same treatment for Afghanistan.
September 27, 2026
A fantastic (and deeply sad) weaving of accounts that spans a couple decades of the Syrian civil war. Really impressive.
“At the heart of every protest, lies a paradox. What feels absurd or quick exotic to a single person – rewriting a law, changing a regime – becomes thinkable only when tens or hundreds of thousands of people act in concert. The movement is like an organism, with metabolism – it thrives by attracting bodies and energy – and will of its own. In certain times, under certain conditions, the movement will succeed in winning popular approval, or prove to disruptive for the status goal to persist. The collective succeeds where the individual could not.
Social scientists,m call this conundrum the problem of collective action. A protest’s power lies, in part, in its size, but few people will join a social movement when the risks of participation are too high. In Manbij, revolutionaries were contending with this hard truth. In five months only about 300 people, in a city of 150,000, had participated in a protest. Just 20 or so were organizers, and even that highly committed group had failed to recruit their own friends and family members. These l leaders paid a deer price, suffering torture and losing their jobs. Meanwhile, the public silence was jarring. The masses were choosing not to risk life and limb, and who could blame them? In the south, the revolution had been raging for half a year with little to show except body bags and broken families.” (143-144)
“Among his many pages of poetry, one line strikes me as something of a philosophy: “I am open to the world, even if it closes in on me, even if it kills me.” Faced with a damaged and failing world, what might be legitimately hope for? Hope might seem like a feeling, an emotional register– yet during the dictatorship and repression, when Oday, and so many others experienced the pits of despair, they did not lose hope. They had no delusions about their prospects, yet somehow, their despair and hope lived together, strange bedfellows. While it’s certainly possible to hold contradictory feelings at once, Oday’s hope does not seem the obverse of despair. In fact, to place them both in the category emotion seems to miss something important. There was a persistence to Oday’s hope, and that of his comrades, through the ups and downs, that we don’t normally associate with emotion. Hope, for him, was not simply a feeling, like love or rage, or any other passion, but a disposition, a trait of character.” (494)
“At the heart of every protest, lies a paradox. What feels absurd or quick exotic to a single person – rewriting a law, changing a regime – becomes thinkable only when tens or hundreds of thousands of people act in concert. The movement is like an organism, with metabolism – it thrives by attracting bodies and energy – and will of its own. In certain times, under certain conditions, the movement will succeed in winning popular approval, or prove to disruptive for the status goal to persist. The collective succeeds where the individual could not.
Social scientists,m call this conundrum the problem of collective action. A protest’s power lies, in part, in its size, but few people will join a social movement when the risks of participation are too high. In Manbij, revolutionaries were contending with this hard truth. In five months only about 300 people, in a city of 150,000, had participated in a protest. Just 20 or so were organizers, and even that highly committed group had failed to recruit their own friends and family members. These l leaders paid a deer price, suffering torture and losing their jobs. Meanwhile, the public silence was jarring. The masses were choosing not to risk life and limb, and who could blame them? In the south, the revolution had been raging for half a year with little to show except body bags and broken families.” (143-144)
“Among his many pages of poetry, one line strikes me as something of a philosophy: “I am open to the world, even if it closes in on me, even if it kills me.” Faced with a damaged and failing world, what might be legitimately hope for? Hope might seem like a feeling, an emotional register– yet during the dictatorship and repression, when Oday, and so many others experienced the pits of despair, they did not lose hope. They had no delusions about their prospects, yet somehow, their despair and hope lived together, strange bedfellows. While it’s certainly possible to hold contradictory feelings at once, Oday’s hope does not seem the obverse of despair. In fact, to place them both in the category emotion seems to miss something important. There was a persistence to Oday’s hope, and that of his comrades, through the ups and downs, that we don’t normally associate with emotion. Hope, for him, was not simply a feeling, like love or rage, or any other passion, but a disposition, a trait of character.” (494)
May 17, 2026
This is one of the most ambitious nonfiction books I’ve ever read. It is equal parts interpersonal drama following illicit trysts and broken friendships, political commentary and treatise, and historical recollection through a dizzying array of first hand sources (the methodology is section is fascinating). In some ways it reminded me of the sweeping panorama of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia painted in War and Peace.
I think this book is excels the most as a pure empathy tool. As westerners the tragedy of the Syrian civil war gets lost behind a morass of parties and acronyms and becomes this dense web of sectarian violence we rarely bother to untangle. Gopal doesn’t really attempt to untangle this web through and systemic accounting of the various factions and alliances, but by centering his book on 6 main characters (and a litany of tertiary characters) you feel a deeper sense of understanding of some of the central perspectives in the conflict. For example, one character enables the growth of ISIS in his city and eventually joins the organization. While his story is deeply frustrating it’s also deeply human, and you see that his decisions were not borne out of deeply held religious fundamentalist but instead personal grievances and perceived slights.
Gopal also uses the book to argue that the Syrian conflict is fundamentally one of economic inequality (as many revolutions have been). I think he makes this argument quite successfully and at various points draws broad parallels with the inequality crisis in the west. While I think that’s fertile ground for analysis and thought, these comparisons are so broad and sweeping (ironically, reminding me of some Tolstoy passages i may or may not have began to glaze over) I think Gopal maybe would’ve better served letting the reader draw their own conclusions. Nevertheless, the economic story painted is fascinating. For example Gopal describes how ISIS gained supporters through a message of economic populism and appeal to halcyon days of Islamic caliphates when everyone could keep their doors unlocked. It does not require much adroitness on the part of the reader to draw a comparison to the populism of the MAGA movement.
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