In an era defined by mass displacement and the devastating human toll of contemporary geopolitics, the imperative to document atrocities has never been more urgent. A powerful new testament to this duty emerges from a collaborative literary project spearheaded by acclaimed Syrian author and journalist Samar Yazbek and award-winning literary translator Leri Price.
The book—a searing collection of firsthand testimonies from civilians who survived the Israeli war on Gaza—originated not in an academic archive, but in the harrowing reality of a residential complex near Doha’s Hamad International Airport. Designated as a medical hub for evacuees, this site transformed from a temporary refuge into a landscape of visceral trauma, populated by men, women, and children navigating life with missing limbs and profound psychological scars.
What began as an intended psychological recovery workshop by Yazbek quickly evolved into a months-long investigative and humanitarian endeavor. By immersing herself in the daily lives of survivors, Yazbek collected raw, unvarnished narratives that frame the conflict unequivocally as an act of genocide. Guided by feminist theorist bell hooks’ axiom that “the personal is political,” Yazbek sought to anchor the collective memory of the victims in immutable print.
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Bringing this harrowing Arabic text into English and multiple other European languages required a monumental, cross-continental translation effort. Managed by literary agent Yasmina Jraissati, the international translation team operated under unique constraints to protect both the integrity of the testimonies and the emotional well-being of the author. Facing profound linguistic hurdles—including the ultimate abandonment of the original poetic title for a haunting phrase pulled from a military leaflet—the team delivered a work that reads, in Price’s words, like "a howl."
This article explores the genesis of this vital book, the profound ethical and emotional challenges of translating war, and the haunting artistic and psychological frameworks that shaped its creation.
Detailed Chronology: From Doha Wards to the Global Page
The Genesis in Doha: Confronting the Horror
The journey of the book began when Samar Yazbek learned of a dedicated residential complex near Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar. The facility was housing and treating severely wounded evacuees evacuated directly from the theater of war in Gaza.
Initially, Yazbek’s intentions were service-oriented. She aimed to volunteer her time by organizing storytelling workshops tailored for women and children, hoping to facilitate some measure of psychological recovery amidst unimaginable grief. However, upon arrival, the sheer scale of the devastation shattered any preconceptions.
"When I went there and saw the hideousness of the scene, the cruel devastation, it seemed more like something from a horror film about people—women, children, and men—with missing limbs, moving around in wheelchairs," Yazbek recounts.
Confronted with the stark reality of mass mutilation and psychological fracture, Yazbek pivoted from a therapeutic role to an investigative and archival one. She resolved to seek out the testimonies of the survivors from a deeply human, granular perspective. For several months, she lived alongside them on a nearly daily basis, recording their experiences, listening to their accounts, and sharing in the weight of their survival.
Transforming Testimony into Collective Memory
The individuals Yazbek interviewed were ordinary civilians—non-combatants swept up in the cataclysm of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. As their stories accumulated day by day, the common threads of systemic destruction led Yazbek to categorize the conflict as an act of genocide.
Determined to prevent these accounts from dissolving into the ether of 24-hour news cycles, she conceived of a book project dedicated to preserving the collective memory of the victims. Grounded in the foundational intersectional framework of bell hooks—specifically the doctrine that the personal is political—Yazbek transformed ephemeral spoken grief into a permanent historical record.
The Multinational Translation Strategy
Once the Arabic manuscript was compiled, the logistical apparatus for a coordinated global release swung into action. Yasmina Jraissati, Yazbek’s literary agent, approached translator Leri Price to spearhead the English edition. Crucially, this translation did not happen in a vacuum; it was coordinated alongside simultaneous translation efforts into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, and other languages.
Recognizing the immense psychological toll Yazbek endured while gathering and transcribing the testimonies, the entire editorial and translational collective sought to minimize administrative burdens on the author. In an innovative workflow move, the translators utilized a shared online document. This digital workspace allowed translators working in different European languages to cross-reference queries, debate linguistic strategies, and resolve textual ambiguities collaboratively.
By centralizing these discussions, Yazbek was spared the compounding trauma of answering repetitive queries across multiple jurisdictions, while the translators ensured that the resulting global editions maintained a unified commitment to the jagged, nonlinear realities of the original testimonies.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Literary Landscape
Samar Yazbek: A Voice in Exile
To understand the gravity of Yazbek’s latest work is to understand her trajectory as a writer and political dissident. A prominent Syrian author and journalist, Yazbek’s career has long been defined by her fearless confrontation of state violence and human rights abuses.
- 2010: Recognized as one of the "Beirut39," a Hay Festival initiative highlighting the most promising Arab writers under the age of 39.
- 2011: Actively participated in the popular uprisings against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a stance that forced her into immediate and permanent exile.
- 2012: Awarded the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize for her seminal memoir, A Woman in the Crossfire, which documented the early days of the Syrian revolution from an insider’s perspective.
- 2013: Received both the PEN Sweden Tucholsky Prize and the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award in recognition of her courageous literary output.
To date, Yazbek has published two short story collections, seven novels, and four nonfiction literary narratives. Her works have broken language barriers, appearing in more than 20 languages worldwide.
Leri Price and the Craft of Arabic Translation
Leri Price stands at the forefront of contemporary Arabic-to-English literary translation. Her meticulous attention to syntax, tone, and cultural nuance has earned her international acclaim and repeated recognition by major literary institutions.
- National Book Award Nominations: Price has achieved the rare distinction of being named a Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature three times:
- 2019: For Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work.
- 2021: For Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay.
- 2024: For Samar Yazbek’s Where the Wind Calls Home.
- Award Recognition: Her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work also secured the prestigious 2019 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
Price’s established, highly communicative working relationship with Yazbek—built over three collaborative book projects—provided the foundational trust necessary to tackle a text of such profound emotional weight.
Official Statements & Reflections
The Author’s Perspective: Samar Yazbek on Neutrality and Goya
Reflecting on the translation process, Yazbek maintains a strict boundary between the creation of the original text and its subsequent linguistic reincarnation. Operating under the philosophy that translation is an inherent act of rewriting, Yazbek deliberately adopted a hands-off approach.
"I didn’t participate in the translation process. I consider translation a form of rewriting, and so I do my best to remain neutral unless Leri asks for my input, which she didn’t in this case," Yazbek explains.
This autonomy was granted to Price because of their long-standing professional synergy. However, the internal landscape of writing the book was far from neutral. When asked to characterize the psychological atmosphere of editing and transcribing the chilling testimonies, Yazbek invokes the visceral, dark imagery of Spanish master Francisco de Goya (1746–1828).
"When I was editing and revising testimonies, or transcribing all these chilling recordings when the Gazan people told me their stories, Goya’s paintings were whirling through my head and all around me," Yazbek states. "They are human brutality, the human being’s dark mind, laid bare in their very worst forms—humans devouring humans. All these horrifying, well-known images about humanity’s capacity for savage cruelty were in my head. Goya was constantly present during the writing of this book."
The Translator’s Perspective: Leri Price on Emotional Toll and Finding the Title
For Leri Price, the primary obstacle in bringing the work into English was not linguistic confusion, but the staggering emotional resonance of the material.
"For me, the main challenge was the emotional toll it took. It doesn’t really feel appropriate to elaborate on that when I am so removed from the people and situations and pain I was describing, but it was very difficult," Price reflects.
This emotional weight complicated one of the most critical elements of any book: the title. The original Arabic title, Thakirat al-nuqsan, presented a profound translation barrier. Richly poetic and restrained, the phrase roughly translates to "Remembering what has gone missing" or "The memory of something that is now lacking." It evokes a subtle, lingering void left behind by sudden disappearance—a core conceptual theme that Yazbek explores in her foreword.
Despite experimenting with numerous iterations, Price and her collaborators found that these literal renderings failed to capture the requisite visceral impact in English. The breakthrough came from literary agent Yasmina Jraissati.
Jraissati proposed adopting a phrase extracted directly from a leaflet dropped by Israeli military forces immediately preceding bombing raids. The resulting English title delivers an unvarnished gut-punch: an embodiment of the terrifying reality that merely existing is to put yourself in danger.
When asked to summarize the entire essence of the book in a single, definitive metaphor, Price bypassed complex literary analysis for an elemental expression of human suffering:
"A howl."
Future Outlook & Literary Legacy
As this vital collection prepares for its global rollout across multiple language editions, its publication marks a watershed moment in contemporary witness literature. By bridging the gap between field journalism, oral history, and avant-garde translation methodologies, Yazbek, Price, and Jraissati have established a new benchmark for how traumatic contemporary events are recorded and disseminated.
The book challenges the global literary community to confront the uncomfortable realities of modern warfare without editorial sanitization. By preserving the jagged, nonlinear contradictions inherent in the survivors’ accounts, the text resists easy narrative closure. Instead, it leaves readers suspended in the void described by the original Arabic title—forced to acknowledge what has vanished, what remains broken, and what the act of survival truly costs.
In the years to come, this collaborative masterwork will undoubtedly serve as a primary historical document for researchers, historians, and literary scholars seeking to understand the human dimensions of the conflict in Gaza. Through Samar Yazbek’s relentless dedication to archival truth and Leri Price’s fearless linguistic stewardship, the voices from the Doha medical wards will echo far beyond their immediate confines, demanding that the world listen to the howl of the displaced.
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