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The home that was our country : a memoir of Syria

By: Malek, Alia, 1974-
Publisher: New York : Nation Books, c2017.Description: xx, 338 p. ; 24 cm.ISBN: 9781568588445Subject(s): Malek, Alia, 1974 -- Family | Damascus (Syria) -- Biography | -- Syria -- History -- Civil War, 2011- | Women journalists -- BiographyDDC classification: 956.91440423092 MA HO
Summary:
In The Home that Was My Country, Syrian-American journalist Alia Malek chronicles her return to her family home in Damascus and the history of the Jabban apartment building. Here, generations of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Armenians lived, worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters. In telling the story of her family over the course of the last century, Alia brings to light the triumphs and failures that have led Syria to where it is today. Her book bristles with insights, as Alia weaves acute political analysis into intimate scenes, interlacing the personal and the political with subtlety and grace. After being in and out of Syria growing up, Alia came back to Syria as a journalist at the time of the Arab Spring, striving to understand it as the country was beginning to disintegrate. As days go on, Alia learns how to speak the language that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about her country's future, and learns how to carry on with everyday life. This intimate portrait of contemporary Syria will shed more light on its history, society, and politics than all of today's war reporting accounts written from the Syrian front. It makes for an eye-opening, highly moving, and beautiful read, and finds the humanity behind the disastrous daily headlines.
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Item type Home library Call number Status Notes Date due Barcode Item holds
REGULAR University of Wollongong in Dubai
Main Collection 		956.91440423092 MA HO (Browse shelf) Available Jan2019 T0061688
Total holds: 0

Machine generated contents note: pt. 1 Generations
1.Origins
2.Sheikha
3.Adrift
4.Pack Your Bags and Go
5.Locked In
pt. 2 Locked Out
6.Anywhere but Here
7.No-Man's-Land
8.They Did It to Themselves
pt. 3 In the Eye of the Belly
9.Return
10.Tahrir Squares
11.Psychodrame
12.Fatherland
13.In the Cards
14.Routine
15.Suspicion
16.Unraveling
17.Power
18.Displaced
19.Gone.

In The Home that Was My Country, Syrian-American journalist Alia Malek chronicles her return to her family home in Damascus and the history of the Jabban apartment building. Here, generations of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Armenians lived, worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters. In telling the story of her family over the course of the last century, Alia brings to light the triumphs and failures that have led Syria to where it is today. Her book bristles with insights, as Alia weaves acute political analysis into intimate scenes, interlacing the personal and the political with subtlety and grace. After being in and out of Syria growing up, Alia came back to Syria as a journalist at the time of the Arab Spring, striving to understand it as the country was beginning to disintegrate. As days go on, Alia learns how to speak the language that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about her country's future, and learns how to carry on with everyday life. This intimate portrait of contemporary Syria will shed more light on its history, society, and politics than all of today's war reporting accounts written from the Syrian front. It makes for an eye-opening, highly moving, and beautiful read, and finds the humanity behind the disastrous daily headlines.

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