96 books like Assad or We Burn the Country

In this book, Javier Cercas, a Spanish journalist and novelist, sets off on a journey to discover the truth about his great-uncle, Manuel Mena, who was killed aged 19 at the Battle of the Ebro, during the Spanish Civil war. Cercas is a man of the center-left, but his relative was killed while fighting on the side of General Franco’s nationalist, anti-Communist and anti-democratic insurgency. This book is about the way that conflict and its memory remains present in families over subsequent generations, shaping subsequent lives in myriad ways, sometimes unseen. It is of particular value I think because of the way in which Cercas manages to examine his opposition to the cause with which his great-uncle served, and his deep sense of linkage to his relative, without ever compromising either.  

Naipaul was one of the greatest English language writers of the last century, in my view. In this novel he traces the fortunes of one Willie Chandran, an Indian resident in the UK, who makes his way to India to join a rural Maoist insurgency against the Indian authorities. The book is a fascinatingly original description of and take on insurgent warfare, fascinating precisely because Naipaul is not a writer especially interested in war, or the usual themes that govern literary treatments of it. As a result, the parts of the book dealing with the insurgency succeed in a masterful and haunting description of the people involved and the conditions they are facing, while entirely avoiding the pitfalls of both sentimentality and cliché.  

Max Hastings here describes the fight between the 10th SS Panzer Division and the French resistance forces, assisted by the British Special Operations Executive, in France in the period following D-Day, 1944. Hastings is in my view a peerless writer on conflict and military history, with a deep understanding of the costs of conflict on individuals, and considerable empathy for those caught up in it. I like that this empathy does not result in excessive romanticization of those engaged here in the irregular warfare against the Nazi German forces. Despite the unambiguous and obvious rights and wrongs of the conflict here described, the author never loses sight of the complexity of human motivations among the combatants, and indeed of the tactical errors and sometimes costly foolishness on the allied side as well as the German.  

The author of this fascinating book was an intelligence officer in a unit of the Provisional IRA, in the town of Newry in Northern Ireland, in the 1980s. Later, he broke under British interrogation and gave evidence against his former comrades. Though he later retracted the evidence, he was subsequently murdered, almost certainly by individuals linked to the republican movement. The book details the author’s reasons for joining the IRA, and his role in the movement’s armed campaign. Collins’s task was to seek out individuals linked in one way or another to British forces in the Newry area and then to facilitate their killing by the IRA. The book is written from a position of deep disillusionment with the campaign in which the author was engaged. It offers unique insight into some of the workings of this organization, and into the nature and motivations of the people involved.   

I found this book in a bookstore in Damascus in 1977 during a two-year Fulbright teaching post at the University of Damascus. Far more than a travel writer’s account of the city – the first in maybe 100 years – it was a ‘love note’ to a city that had enchanted the young traveler. Reading it opened my eyes to the immense charm of the city and many of its secrets. Colin Thurbon returned to Damascus 50 years later in 2017 and found the city empty of tourists again. The first time, because it had not yet been ‘discovered’  by European tourists, and the second time because all the tourists had left. But the old city was much unchanged by the Syrian civil war with only limited damage to the Tomb of Salaheddin next to the monumental and breathtakingly beautiful Umayyad mosque.  

I cannot ignore the turmoil that has become Syria over the past decade. Many books have appeared about the peaceful demonstrations that turned violent and a civil war and a proxy war for Iran, Russia, the US, and various Arab states. This book provides a detailed history of how Syria descended into such violence.  It gave me a detailed understanding of how the ‘Opposition’ to the Asad government emerged in the country. And engages with the stories of the Opposition fighters in their exile in adjacent countries. Concluding that the war is not yet over, it provides some hope for those of us who watch from a distance as Russia and Iran reposition and redeploy in response to other critical global events.  

Frontline Syria serves as an “after-action report” of a highly complex conflict. I’ve known the author, David Phillips, since he was a teenager. He grew up to be a prominent diplomat and human rights activist and we worked together for a time. His book analyzes the U.S. response to the Syrian civil war and the proxy war that it is. Frontline Syria is erudite, deep, thorough, comprehensive, and accurately reflects what I’ve come to know about the Syrian crisis in my own work. The timeline at the front is a useful tool for following the myriad events that follow. Other tools include glossaries of acronyms and personalities. 

I was so moved by this true story of Alaa, an ambulance driver who loves his city of Aleppo so much that he chooses to stay there when war breaks out. In addition to helping the people of Aleppo, Alaa helps the hundreds of cats left homeless by the war. His kindness inspires others, who volunteer and donate enough money for Alaa to build a shelter he names “The House of Cats Ernesto” in memory of a friend’s beloved cat. People who visit the shelter are so filled with hope, they donate more money and soon Alaa builds a playground for the children of Aleppo. Kindness begets kindness, and this story lifted my heart and restored my faith in people, most of whom I truly believe are innately kind.

The Desert and the Sown is perhaps the most personal of all Gertrude Bell’s travel books revealing a deeply affectionate engagement with the people and places of Syria. It is the first of her books that I read while researching the subject of Bedouin tribes in early 20th century Syria. I wanted to know what connection the Bedouin tribal elites had to the major trading cities such as Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. There, in her description of Damascus, she revealed the evidence I had been looking for: “In Damascus the sheikhs of the richer tribes have their townhouses; you may meet Muhammad of the Hasene or Bassan of the Beni Rashid peacocking down the bazaars on a fine Friday; in embroidered cloaks and purple and silver kerchiefs fastened about their brows with camel’s hair ropes bound with gold…” I can just see those tribal leaders now in my mind’s… show more.

Offended by the government’s destruction of ancient parts of the Damascus bazaar, Tergeman decides to record the Syrian traditions she experienced growing up in the city before they are lost. In somewhat idyllic form, she describes the celebrations and feast days, traditional foods, colorful characters announcing Ramadan hours, café storytellers, and the proverbs and sayings that were part of everyday life. Best of all, she conveys the warmth of family and community life. With a wealth of detail that only a Syrian can describe, the book gives us a glimpse into the values and beliefs that until recently were an integral part of the culture. Although many traditions are lost now, they still serve as a model for the way life should be in normal times.