Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War

by Marwan Hisham, Molly Crabapple Narrated by Peter Ganim

Overview

A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century's bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom.

In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends—fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq—joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another's eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country's president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble.

Brothers of the Gun is the story of a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. Marwan watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He watched the country that ran through his veins—the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears—be destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape.

Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution—and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Syrian freelance journalist Marwan Hisham’s gritty memoir of the war in Syria gives a human voice to a conflict that few in the West understand. Narrator Peter Ganim gives a fitting voice to the author. He speaks several languages, including Arabic, and sounds comfortable with the proper names in this intimate story. His delivery is warm and playful when called for but also reflects the frustration and horror the author experiences as he carves out a career as a journalist under constant threat of arrest, torture, and execution. While the print version of this memoir is enhanced by powerful artwork by Molly Crabapple, this well-narrated audio version allows listeners to conjure their own images of Hisham’s struggles and triumphs. D.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Hillary L. Chute

…unique…[Hisham's] viewpoint as a civilian struggling within [Raqqa], and especially his perspective on ISIS, is gripping. Brothers of the Gun tracks the Syrian civil war in both words and images from the ground and from the inside, offering one of the clearest explanations (even when it's confessing befuddlement) of the war's growth and the unrest that is its motor…Crabapple is an accomplished artist, and her black-and-white images, varying in size from spot drawings to double-spreads, have a fluidity and dynamism that add to the text rather than distracting from it…The drawings have both immediacy and texture.

From the Publisher

This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple’s extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict, a struggle for peace, and a human tragedy in desperate need of attention. It is a compelling, sobering, and necessary book.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
 
“From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth. Many books will be written on the war’s exhaustive devastation of bodies and souls, and the defiant resistance of many trapped men and women, but the Mahabharata of the Levant has already found its wisest chroniclers.”—Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire
 
“A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time . . . In great personal detail, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple poignantly capture the tumultuous life in Syria before, after, and during the war—from inside one young man’s consciousness.”—Angela Davis
 
“Marwan Hisham took part in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad and then did the unthinkable—wrote journalism from inside ISIS territory, risking his life so that the world might know the truth. He gives us an unforgettable portrait of what it feels like to resist a tyrannical dictator, live under ISIS occupation, brave bombs falling from the sky, and somehow survive with your humanity intact. Punctuated by Molly Crabapple’s beautiful, haunting art, this heart-rending memoir is essential reading to understand one of the greatest catastrophes of our time.”—Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Syrian freelance journalist Marwan Hisham’s gritty memoir of the war in Syria gives a human voice to a conflict that few in the West understand. Narrator Peter Ganim gives a fitting voice to the author. He speaks several languages, including Arabic, and sounds comfortable with the proper names in this intimate story. His delivery is warm and playful when called for but also reflects the frustration and horror the author experiences as he carves out a career as a journalist under constant threat of arrest, torture, and execution. While the print version of this memoir is enhanced by powerful artwork by Molly Crabapple, this well-narrated audio version allows listeners to conjure their own images of Hisham’s struggles and triumphs. D.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-03-06
A richly detailed, sometimes horrifying account of the Syrian civil war.Here's one thing to note about getting tear-gassed: Writes Hisham, soda pop in the eyes is a good remedy, and "along with the tear gas, the Coca-Cola washes away any lingering traces of shame," even if it leaves an awful mess. But this is a book of awful messes, of city blocks and families torn apart and friendships broken by events. The brothers of the title are Hisham's friends Nael and Tareq, citizens of the ancient city of Raqqa, "a superstitious, conservative community, where many people insisted that before one undertook any important task or made a difficult choice, one needed to go to the tomb of some pious wali and ask for his blessings." The choices each of the boys made led to government school for one, death for another, and a life on the run as an Islamist revolutionary for the third. As he recounts the events leading to the increasing repression on the part of the Assad regime and the eventual descent of Syria into civil conflict, Hisham writes with a wryly observant eye for telling remarks. If the customary cry of faithful warriors was that God is great, then the quietly subversive retort of a Raqqawi graffiti artist makes for a fine rejoinder: "Tomorrow is better." Tomorrow is a rare commodity in Hisham's fast-moving account, which is enhanced by Crabapple's powerful ink drawings. Having abandoned the religiosity of his youth—what Syria needs is science, reason, and economists instead of mullahs—Hisham comes to a hard conclusion: Too many Syrians will pick up the gun in the name of Islam even though, "when you are a programmed machine with a gun, all that is left in you that is human is the feeling that you are invincible; when you are not, you know exactly how weak you are."A sharp, searing view of war from the front lines and an important contribution to understanding how a nation can disintegrate before one's eyes.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169296259
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	05/15/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

One
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Brothers of the Gun"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Marwan Hisham.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos