Brothers of the Gun

<p><strong>A <em>NEW YORK TIMES</em> NOTABLE BOOK &bull; LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD &bull; "This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple's extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict."&mdash;Bryan Stevenson, author of <em>Just Mercy</em></strong></p> <p>In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends&mdash;fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq&mdash;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.</p> <p>Marwan was there to witness and document firsthand the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. He 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 saw the country that ran through his veins&mdash;the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears&mdash;be destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape.</p> <p>Illustrated with more than eighty ink drawings by Molly Crabapple that bring to life the beauty and chaos, Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution&mdash;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.</p> <p><strong>"A book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth."&mdash;Pankaj Mishra, author of <em>Age of Anger </em>and<em> From the Ruins of Empire</em></strong></p> <p><strong>"A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time."&mdash;Angela Davis</strong></p>