No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria

by Rania Abouzeid

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018


This astonishing book by the prize-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid tells the tragedy of the Syrian War through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country.

Extending back to the first demonstrations of 2011, No Turning Back dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict. As protests ignited in Daraa, some citizens were brimming with a sense of possibility. A privileged young man named Suleiman posted videos of the protests online, full of hope for justice and democracy. A father of two named Mohammad, secretly radicalized and newly released from prison, saw a darker opportunity in the unrest. When violence broke out in Homs, a poet named Abu Azzam became an unlikely commander in a Free Syrian Army militia. The regime’s brutal response disrupted a family in Idlib province, where a nine-year-old girl opened the door to a military raid that caused her father to flee. As the bombings increased and roads grew more dangerous, these people’s lives intertwined in unexpected ways.

Rania Abouzeid brings readers deep inside Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of ISIS. Based on more than five years of clandestine reporting on the front lines, No Turning Back is an utterly engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters that shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century’s greatest humanitarian disasters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393609493
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	1,014,858
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 16.60(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Rania Abouzeid has won the Michael Kelly Award and George Polk Award for foreign reporting, among many other prizes for international journalism. She has written for the New Yorker, Time, Foreign Affairs, Politico, the Guardian, and the Los Angeles Times. A former New America fellow, she lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

Susan Nezami is a classically trained actress, director, and writer. Her theatrical studies originally began outside the United States, later continuing at UCLA, where she was able to join forces with such internationally renowned theatrical companies as Teatro di Roma of Italy and Theatre du Soleil of France.

Editorial Reviews

[No Turning Back] offers page after page of extraordinary reporting and many flashes of exquisitely descriptive prose. But it is the characters around whom the story is built who make the book unforgettable, as Abouzeid threads together their stories of hope and loss…Abouzeid navigated [the] increasingly treacherous terrain with legendary courage as she wrote for Foreign Affairs and other publications, building the stories of the people in this book around long, repeated interviews and, often, long days and nights under fire alongside them. The result is a tremendous sense of intimacy with the victims and the violence that surrounds them…One reads the book's final pages with no hope of a happy ending. But one also reads them with the conviction that Abouzeid's remarkable journalistic and literary work has given us, at last, a book worthy of the enormous tragedy that is Syria.

The New York Times Book Review - Christopher Dickey

03/05/2018
Foreign correspondent Abouzeid spins finely detailed and informed narratives of how life in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria descended into street protests and the bloody ongoing chaos of the “civilian revolution.” Abouzeid explores the revolt, primarily through the stories of young men who take on the regime, including Suleiman, a wealthy middle manager turned activist; Mohammad, a father imprisoned for suspected Islamist ties and subjected to grisly tortures; and the pseudonymous Abu Azzam, a literature student turned rebel fighter. She also conveys the plight of noncombatants, such as one young girl, Ruha, and her family, who escape to Turkey to become “business-class refugees,” out of immediate danger but enduring the hardships of a foreign country while trying to aid those in their hometown across the border. The author skillfully sets forth the complex political and military rivalries between those supporting and opposing the regime, discussing their backers from Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as the foreign and homegrown fighters who became ISIS. In notes at the beginning and end, Abouzeid details her intense and perilous reporting process. She was banned from the country, she explains, soon after protests began, but nevertheless spent roughly three weeks a month clandestinely entering Syria for the next several years. Her grueling reportage is a formidable accomplishment. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Weaving together the lives of mothers and sons, fighters and civilians, the oppressors and the oppressed in one epic journey, Rania tells the story of a nation in the grips of revolution and social upheaval. From the initial feeling of hope to the ultimate struggle for survival, this is an essential read not only for those interested in Syria and the Middle East, but for anyone who strives to understand the mechanics of a society torn by civil war.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Rania Abouzeid has not just written a powerful human story of the most tangled war of our time. This is journalism at its very best: brave; personal; written with aching beauty. She has rewritten history’s first draft with great authority.

Lyse Doucet

A fabulous and illuminating account of the Syrian conflict told by a world-class journalist at the height of her powers. This is about real people, their real stories and how they web together to tell the wider story of a nation in crisis. A rich and rewarding book that informs, excites and inspires. A truly first-class piece of high-end reportage.

Tim Butcher

No Turning Back is a monumental achievement. I can think of few other journalists, past or present, who have reported on any war as courageously, analyzed it as trenchantly, or rendered the lives of its participants and victims as movingly, as Abouzeid has done here for the war in Syria. The book will no doubt endure as a work of literature. But that is incidental. Right now it is an urgent and devastating dispatch from the world as it is.

Luke Mogelson

Rania Abouzeid has written an intimate portrait of a chaotic war. Her profiles of Syrians caught up in the savage unraveling of the country heightens the tragedy, a lens missing from the news stories. This book is a must read for anyone who has watched the seemingly incomprehensible horror and for policy makers who must try to stop the violence.

Deb Amos

The civil war in Syria is the most catastrophic event of our time, and the most dimly understood. Most journalists won’t go near it. Rania Abouzeid has produced a work of stunning reportage from the very heart of the conflict, daring to go to the most dangerous places in order to get the story. The result is a sensational book that allows us a deeper, and more humane, understanding of this terrible war; it’s a credit to Abouzeid’s bravery and fortitude.

Dexter Filkins

[No Turning Back] offers page after page of extraordinary reporting and exquisite prose, rendering its individual subjects with tremendous intimacy.

"8 New Books We Recommend This Week" - The New York Times

Extraordinary. … There is no better way to refocus on Syria than to read Rania Abouzeid’s book. Abouzeid tells the story of the conflict through the life stories of individuals. What could simply be a standard journalistic device succeeds triumphantly because of the skill and sensitivity of Abouzeid’s writing, the depth of her reporting and the extraordinary nature of the stories she tells. As a result, her book has the compelling qualities of a novel, rather than simply a work of reportage.

Financial Times

Excellent. ... [P]robably the most perceptive journalistic account of the war so far, highlighting the individual stories while never losing sight of the broader situation and history. ... Abouzeid’s understated bravery and ability to merge into the background speak to the power of immersive eyewitness reporting, foregrounding the experience of the people she meets and writing with modesty.

Lindsey Hilsum - New York Review of Books

[An] unparalleled account of the Syrian uprising, drawing on six years of immersive reporting.

The New Yorker

[S]earing and sparingly beautiful…War, she reminds us, alters the architecture of the city as much as it scrambles the human psyche.

Najwa al-Qattan - Los Angeles Review of Books

2017-11-28
Harrowing reporting from the front lines of the civil war in Syria.As Beirut-based freelance journalist Abouzeid, who has won the George Polk Award, writes in her opening pages, the Syrian government declared her an enemy and a spy fairly early in the popular uprising, forcing her not just to enter the country illegally, but also to focus on the opposition. That the book does not give equivalency, false or otherwise, to the government's side of the story does not diminish its objectivity or value. The author brings us the stories of people who, though capable of speaking for themselves, are not often heard from and might as well be voiceless insofar as audiences outside the country are concerned. By Abouzeid's account, all is chaos and ruin: so many people have died in the civil war in Syria that the U.N. long ago gave up trying to count them. The author is a reliable guide to the ethnic and religious intricacies of the struggle; one of the figures she interviews, while no friend of the regime, is an Alawite, like the ruling family, and therefore is reckoned to be one of them. That does not make him a friend of the opposition, not necessarily. Just so, some of the people Abouzeid profiles are members of militias allied with the Islamic State group and al-Qaida; many of the players involved answer in the affirmative to the question, "do you want the Quran to be the constitution in a future state?" Says one thoughtful rebel who figures prominently in the account, "We want an Islamic state, too, but only after we've liberated Syria and start liberating Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan can we establish a caliphate." Readers without familiarity with the many strains of opposition to the Assad regime are likely to emerge from this book a touch less confused—though without much cause for hope, either.An eye-opening account of those who "played a pivotal role in the revolution's trajectory."

Kirkus Reviews

No Turning Back works both on the level of deeply reported personal narratives of a tragedy that continues to unspool and also as a major work of history.

Peter Bergen

Rania Abouzeid has written an intimate portrait of a chaotic war. Her profiles of Syrians caught up in the savage unraveling of the country heightens the tragedy, a lens missing from the news stories. This book is a must-read for anyone who has watched the seemingly incomprehensible horror and for policymakers who must try to stop the violence.

Deborah Amos

[An] unparalleled account of the Syrian uprising.

The New Yorker

Eloquent and devastating.… Abouzeid relates the drama of this chaos in gripping prose.

The Christian Science Monitor

Page after page of extraordinary reporting and many flashes of exquisitely descriptive prose.… [U]nforgettable.… Abouzeid’s remarkable journalistic and literary work has given us, at last, a book worthy of the enormous tragedy that is Syria.

Christopher Dickey - New York Times Book Review

Rania Abouzeid has produced a masterpiece.… No one else, to my knowledge, has reported this story so bravely or narrated it with such intimacy and power.

Robert F. Worth

Extraordinary.… There is no better way to refocus on Syria than to read Rania Abouzeid’s book.

Financial Times

Probably the most perceptive journalistic account of the war so far.

New York Review of Books

In No Turning Back, Rania Abouzeid brings you up close and personal to the men and women who led the uprising in Syria. Abouzeid understands these people so well and her writing is so vivid that they practically jump off the page with all their dreams, ideals, and misplaced optimism. After No Turning Back, you won’t be able to hear anything more about Syria without feeling that you too know the people who are living (and dying) through it.

Barbara Demick

[M]asterful, intense … Abouzeid’s altogether intimate, revealing, and moving accomplishment is essential to any attempt to understand this tragedy.

Booklist

02/15/2018
In her debut book, Polk Award-winning journalist Abouzeid weaves narratives of very different individuals, along with their families and loved ones, involved in the Syrian civil war. Through the eyes of activists, instigators, victims, helpless bystanders, refugees, and ruthless killers, readers witness as Syria dissolves into a lawless territory with three main factions and their own competing subgroups: the dictatorship, the rebels fighting for democracy, and the Islamic extremists. As the war heated up, death was so commonplace that people became dehumanized, with casualties only known as the day's number. Abouzeid pens personal narratives as great family epics during a period of change, sorrow, and upheaval. Suleiman, a well-off young man, demonstrates the power of social media by posting protests online. Mohammad, a family man, shows how and why he turned to Islamic extremism. Ruah, a young girl, ends up a refugee in Turkey, alive, but still mentally in Syria. Abu Azzam, a poet, emerges as a leader in the Free Syrian Army. VERDICT A brilliant, detailed work on a devastating topic. For readers interested in narrative nonfiction, the Syrian war, the Middle East, and personal accounts. [See Prepub Alert, 9/11/17.]—Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM

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