“Syrian Literature Beyond Reductionism” brings together eleven Syrian voices who, through poetry, short stories, and articles, offer literary perspectives on a country in transition. The texts were...
In the poem “Mass Grave,” Hadil Balloul reflects on the illusion of freedom that accompanied the fall of the regime, and the confrontation with the reality of successive dictatorships ruling Syria.
Aliaa Amina Ahmad writes about how women's space in the public sphere in Syria has shrunk amid the upheavals of recent years. By highlighting discrimination, digital violence, and patriarchal power...
In the essay Why Did You Leave Us Behind the Wall?, Mustafa Karahamad examines the political divisions that have shaped Syria since 2025 and explores possible paths forward. By comparing the situation...
Drawing on the literary portrayals of power and violence, found in the works of Shakespeare and Joseph Heller, writer Fatima Khoder examines how similar mechanisms operate in present-day Syria. The...
“A Final Crossing” follows the migration journey of a Syrian family forced to leave their home and country and cross into the unknown. Narrated by a doll that accompanies the family, the story...
In a time of massacres, the boundaries blur between the worlds of the living and the dead, between survival and its opposite. Sieve is a story about a woman who finds her name on a list of the dead...
In this interview with Syrian writer Osama Shaker about his debut novel The Cell of Hayy al-Daqqaqin, Mervat Shehadeh opens a window onto Damascus in the 1980s and onto writing as an act of rebellion...
In periods of political transformation, freedom of expression is often presented as one of the clearest signs of a move toward a more open society. Yet the right to speak does not necessarily...
In Roudi Suliman’s poem, memories of a house, the people who once lived there, and the events of the war are brought back to life. The loss is not only of a place, but of a home that holds history...
The poem draws on a personal memory tied to the Tadamon neighborhood in Damascus, where one of the most brutal massacres of the Syrian war took place. The poet returns to the moment when the killer...
There are throats that neither knives nor bullets can kill; the more the body closes in around them, the wider they become. Whenever their owner tries to choke them, they emerge through another wound...
Dara Abdallah is a Syrian poet and writer, born in the city of Qamishli in 1990. He lives in Berlin since 2013, and studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University. He...
PEN/Opp publishes “Crisis and unrepresentability” – a new written lecture by the Syrian author, thinker and the Tucholsky Prize winner Yassin Al-Haj Saleh. The lecture was previously presented in...
When we headed towards the journalism, we met Yaroub Aleesa (born 1969 in the Syrian province of Hama). He picked us out of the confusion of the streets and led us into the house of journalism where...
