Revolt in Syria: ordinary Syrians offer their insight into crisis

Irish journalist Stephen Starr worked in Syria for several years and brings his intimate knowledge of the country to this book.

Revolt in Syria
Stephen Starr
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Irish journalist Stephen Starr spent several years working as a freelancer in Syria, forming an extensive network of friends and acquaintances from all walks of life before he was forced to flee the country as the violence escalated around him.

Through conversations with Syrians from right across the political, economic and religious spectrums, many of them conducted in hushed tones in the country’s ubiquitous coffee shops, Starr creates an unusually complex and nuanced picture of a country at war with itself, one that takes the reader far beyond black-and-white media reports and analysis.

It is a picture of a paranoid and deeply divided society, one that is fractured along class, economic, sectarian and ethnic lines, in which previously harmonious elements, both sectarian and secular, have turned against each other for reasons of self-interest.

Although it sometimes reads like the publisher was in too much of a hurry to go to press, Starr's well-informed insights and intimate knowledge of the intricacies of Syrian society and culture make Revolt in Syria a valuable asset for anyone who is striving  to understand this exceptionally, and increasingly, complex civil conflict.