http://books.wwnorton.com/books/No-Turning-Back/ Recommendation by Kareem Shaheen: “Probably one of the best books about Syria written on the uprising-turned–civil war so far. Abouzeid’s book is based on countless visits to various parts of Syria as a journalist where she records the evolution of the conflict from its early days as a protest movement through its militarization, weaving in fault lines of displacement, sectarian conflict, extremism, and totalitarian brutality. It is told through the eyes of compelling and fascinating characters including a refugee child and her family, a jihadist, a young man tortured and disappeared for joining the opposition, a man whose family was kidnapped by foreign jihadists, and rebel fighters. The prose is evocative and beautiful, the reporting powerful and thorough.”
http://www.interlinkbooks.com/product_info.php?products_id=3408 Recommendation by Kaheem Shaheen: “A disclaimer: I read the Arabic version of this book, but if the English translation is one-tenth as good it’ll be worth your money. It lays out the story of a Christian man who was wrongfully imprisoned as a member of an Islamist organization in the Assad regime’s notorious prison and torture chamber in Palmyra, and veers wildly from hysterical, black comedy and absurdism to desperation, hope, depression, and the crushing of the human will that is central to Syria’s totalitarian and labyrinthine security apparatus. The writer himself was imprisoned for years, and the book is an amalgamation of what he saw and experienced. It’s a fantastic introduction to prison literature, and will give you a sense of why Syrians rebelled in the first place.”
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/my-country-9781408895092/ Recommendation by Kaheem Shaheem: “A young media activist at the time of the uprising, Eid chronicles in this book his experience growing up in Assad’s Syria, surviving a sarin gas attack on his home town, picking up arms against the government, and the starvation siege that he endured in the town of Moadhamiyah where he grew up. It is a powerful account of the brutality of the war, and the tortures that drove Syrians out of their country.”
Syria Sources in English 