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

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK ? LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD ? "This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple's extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict." -- Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

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.

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 -- 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.

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 -- 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.

"A book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth." -- 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." -- Angela Davis

• We started tracking this book on October 17, 2017.
• This book was $13.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 52 times in the past 2,681 days.
• The current price of this book is $6.99 last checked 3 hours ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $4.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on April 27, 2020.
• This book has been $1.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on February 3, 2025.
• This book has been $14.99 6 times since we started tracking it.

• Politics & Social Sciences

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 281 Pages
• File Size: 104,292 KB