Brothers of the Gun

A Memoir of the Syrian War

De: Marwan Hisham, Molly Crabapple

Narrado por: Peter Ganim

A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century’s bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom.

In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends - fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq - joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm in arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another’s eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble.

Brothers of the Gun is the story of a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. Marwan watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He watched the country that ran through his veins - the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears - be destroyed in front of him and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape.

Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution - and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope.

©2018 Marwan Hisham, Molly Crabapple (P)2018 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple’s extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict, a struggle for peace, and a human tragedy in desperate need of attention. It is a compelling, sobering, and necessary book.” (Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy)

“From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth. Many books will be written on the war’s exhaustive devastation of bodies and souls, and the defiant resistance of many trapped men and women, but the Mahabharata of the Levant has already found its wisest chroniclers.” (Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire)

“A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time... In great personal detail, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple poignantly capture the tumultuous life in Syria before, after, and during the war—from inside one young man’s consciousness.” (Angela Davis)

Perfect with Peter Ganim

Can't imagine this book in any other voice but Peter Ganim's! The emotion, the energy of the text are perfectly expressed in his narration.

Powerful memoir of Syrian war

A powerful and gripping memoir that encapsulates how much has been lost in the Syrian war and it’s complexity. Also offers a perspective on the banality of the people in isis and how their rule in Raqqa was like a colonial invasion