Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution

(Hardback)

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A frontline eyewitness account of the Syrian Revolution from prizewinning journalist and activist Hadi Abdullah, who broke the story of Assad's alliance with Hezbollah, a fact that changed the course and severity of the war.

"This is Hadi al-Abdullah. A few years ago, he was studying to be a nurse. But when war broke out in Syria, he took a different path. He chose to join antigovernment protests and tell the world the story of an uprising that became a civil war. Years of conflict turned him from an eyewitness into a frontline war reporter. This new role of his brought added risk, for himself, and for his friends and colleagues. Sometimes they would go towards the bombs, sometimes the bombs would come towards them."
-New York Timesdocumentary "Dying to Be Heard: Reporting Syria's War"

Abdullah became a trusted voice on social media, where he joined the ranks of cyber-dissenters and reported from the field. His memoir tracks his experience as a first responder during the Arab Spring uprisings, through the liberation of Syria in December 2024, by which time as a war reporter he had lost many of his closest friends, two of whom were his cameramen. After the brutal siege of Homs, Abdullah fled north to Idlib Province among the rebel factions, which posed their own dangers to young reporters. Astonishing for its rendering of friendships forged during the emotional impacts of war, and using creative language and style, Critical Conditions explores not only the political concerns of the author and his closest friends who allrisked capture, prison, torture, or death every day, but gives centrality to their feelings during the life-changing mission they undertook by challenging the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Critically injured in an assassination attempt in Aleppo in 2016, Abdullah spent months in recovery in Turkey, where he was interviewed for a multimedia feature on The New York Times and by Scott Pelley for 60 Minutes.Later that year, he won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. Abdullah's new Afterword gives breathtaking detail to the Liberation of Syria the first week of December 2024 and remarks on the challenges for Syrians that lie ahead.

Author Bio

Hadi Abdullahis Syrian reporter and activist. Born in Homs in 1988 he rose to prominence in Syria in 2011 and 2012 when he covered the siege of Homs at the hands of the Syrian regime. In 2016 he won the prestigious Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize in the citizen journalist category. He currently resides in Homs in Syria and has worked for various Syrian opposition networks, including Syria TV. He is active on Instagram and Telegram.

Alessandro Columbuis Senior Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Westminster. Originally from Sardinia, Alessandro learned Arabic in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and earned his PhD in Arabic literature from the University of Edinburgh. Hislatestpublicationis Zakariyya Tamir and the politics of the Syrian short story Modernity,gender and authoritarianism published by IB Tauris. He won the 2023 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understandingfor his translation of Zakariyya Tamir's Sour Grapes, published by Syracuse University Press.