Régis Le Sommier’s just published book is a highly idiosyncratic contribution to a growing body of books on Syria’s civil war. The author is deputy editor in chief of the elitist weekly Paris Match. Like David W. Lesch’s 2005 book, this one too is largely based on the author’s intimate knowledge of Syria’s President, a number of interviews with him and his entourage, and six trips to Syria in two years. The book is not meant to contribute highly original information on any aspect of the Syrian war. It is rather a knowledgeable insider’s account of a host of events whose wider impact Syria watchers have often missed out on. It’s also an indictment of what has been a woolly French policy vis-à-vis the country. Its originality lies in its angle.

Nikolaos van Dam’s book is the work of a trenchant scholar and diplomat with a clear understanding of Syrian dynamics: the author is a decade-long Syria watcher who laments the country’s multiple plights. His book is an austere distillation of wrong choices, oversights and stubborn obsessions. It’s also a linear history of the Syrian conflict: van Dam shows how once the revolt broke out, war was inevitable. As the Dutch Special Envoy for Syria, van Dam is well-positioned to inquire into the 21^st century’s most toxic conflict. His analysis is level-headed and intellectually coherent, quite possibly the best one so far in the form of a single volume.

Dawn Chatty’s book is a remarkable achievement in that it intertwines deep historical knolwedge with the impressions of the ever-curious traveller. The author has spent many years working in and on Syria. The book is not written from the perspective of the political sciencist, but that of the historian and anthropologist. In this sense, the reader should be familiar not only with modern Syrian politics but also with broader historical and geopolitical processes of the last two centuries around the area of ‘Greater Syria’. It is a history of broader human movements within a circle of continuous conflict and displacement. A light unto the nations, Syria has always been welcoming towards strangers.

Follow this link for our book review of Frédéric Pichon, Syrie, une guerre pour rien (Les Éditions du Cerf, 2017).

Frédéric Pichon’s diminutive book is more of a scathing indictment of what Western nations, France in particular, have done wrong in Syria. It is by no means a history of Syria’s war, which the reader ought to be familiar with before reading. French scholarship on Mediterranean affairs has been in no shortage. By virtue of its former regional status as a great power and an ever-sophisticated academia, France counts many knowledgeable pundits. Yet, an overwhelming preponderance of Anglophone international relations literature and the more introverted nature of the French academia has meant that francophone publications have made less noise.

Lebanon’s size has always been inversely proportional to the magnitude of its turbulence. More of a mirror of the region’s intricacies than a catalyst, the country offers a unique regional case; although in ever-simmering tension, it manages to escape the contours of a country-wide flare-up. This is more often than not attributed to the country’s bitter memories of the civil war (1975-1990). For others, it is the product of an ill-thought out, yet relatively balanced consociational mechanism of power-sharing.