Samar Yazbek

Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist, born in 1970 in the Latakia region. She writes in Arabic across several forms: novels, short stories, film and television scripts, and criticism of cinema and television. Her work has been translated into many languages and is known for looking at Syrian society from inside, and for its engagement with political violence and the position of women.

She studied Arabic literature at the University of Latakia before turning to journalism and to writing for Syrian television and film. She belongs to the Alawite minority, the same community as President Bashar al-Assad, and she has openly opposed his government. That tension runs through much of her writing. Her first novel, Heavenly Girl (2002), broke taboos in Syrian society and established her among a new generation of writers.

In 2011 she joined the protests against the regime and kept a record of what she witnessed, later published as A Woman in the Crossfire. Her diaries describe the uprising that began in Dar'a and the brutal response that followed. Her outspokenness led to her detention by Syrian security forces, and not long after she was forced to leave the country with her daughter. She has lived in Paris since then.

Her activism has been sustained. She worked with groups defending freedom of expression and human rights, edited the feminist online magazine Women of Syria, and in 2012 launched Women Now for Development, which teaches Syrian women to read and write, offers vocational training and computer skills, and encourages political participation. In 2010 she was chosen as one of the Beirut39, a selection of promising Arab writers under forty, and in 2012 she received the PEN/Pinter prize. She later took part in the Syrian cultural caravan of 2014 and 2015, a road trip across Europe organised by Syrian artists.

Her legacy lies in the way she has combined literature, testimony and the defence of human rights. Her books, translated into several European languages, have made her a key voice for understanding Syria after 2011 and the place of women within that conflict.