By Hadi Abdullah
Translated by Alessandro Columbu

278 pages.
56 B&W images plus maps.
October 2025.

$32.95 | 9781954600355 hardcover
$26.95 | 9781954600959 softcover
ebook available

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A frontline eyewitness account of the Syrian Revolution from prizewinning journalist and activist Hadi Abdullah. As seen and heard on 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley “Fighting for Life in Syria’s Vicious Civil War,” and “Wartime Radio” with Dana Ballout on This American Life.

“This is Hadi al-Abdullah. A few years ago, he was studying to be a nurse. But when war broke out in Syria, he took a different path. He chose to join antigovernment protests and tell the world the story of an uprising that became a civil war. Years of conflict turned him from an eyewitness into a frontline war reporter. This new role of his brought added risk, for himself, and for his friends and colleagues. Sometimes they would go towards the bombs, sometimes the bombs would come towards them.”
—New York Times documentary “Dying to Be Heard: Reporting Syria’s War”

Abdullah became a trusted voice on social media, where he joined the ranks of cyber-dissenters and reported from the battlefields. After the brutal siege of Homs in 2013, Abdullah fled north to Idlib Province among the rebel factions, which posed their own dangers to young reporters. His memoir tracks his experience as a first responder during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, through the liberation of Syria on December 8, 2024, by which time he had lost many of his closest friends, two of whom were his cameramen. Astonishing for its rendering of friendships forged during war and its impacts, Critical Conditions explores not only the humanitarian concerns of the author and his closest friends who all risked capture, prison, torture, or death every day in the name of a free non-sectarian Syria, but gives centrality to their feelings using creative language and style.

Critically injured in an assassination attempt in Aleppo in 2016, Abdullah spent months in recovery in Turkey, where he was interviewed for a multimedia feature on The New York Times and by Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes for a documentary on the first responder organization The White Helmets. Later that year, Abdullah won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. New content in this English-language edition gives breathtaking detail to the liberation of Syria over the first week of December 2024 and the Syrian people’s response to the fall of a 40-year regime of terror under the Assad family. His epilogue remarks on the challenges for Syrians that lie ahead.

“One of the most urgent and moving works to emerge from the last decade…. Critical Conditions is not only a personal diary but also a collective archive, one that bears witness to the lives, voices, and struggles of countless Syrians, whose stories often vanish in the noise and politics of war. Translation here becomes an act of solidarity, ensuring that these words travel and ignite new readers across languages and borders.”
—Ibrahim Fawzy, New Books Network podcast.
Listen to Fawzy’s interview with translator Alessandro Columbu

“I read Critical Conditions in one sitting. It was so engrossing, vivid, and both painful and uplifting to read. Hadi Abdullah has managed to convey the agony, and the ecstasy of life lived trying to effectively report on the armed conflict in Syria. It is a testament to the human spirit, to the will to survive, and the despair of loss. Hadi is not only an extraordinary journalist, reporter, and witness, but a philosopher and poet as well. His text is brutal but also poetic and reflective. A wonderful addition to the literature on Syria’s long revolution, Critical Conditions is a perfect accompaniment to the film produced by another journalist (and rebel) caught up in the Siege of Aleppo, Waad Alkateab’s film For Sama.”
—Dawn Chatty, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, Oxford University

“A testament to friendship and community, loss and grief, survival and creativity, faith and courage, the stubborn grace of rebuilding. A masterclass in the art of being human.”
—Ibtihal Rida Mahmood, ArabLit

“Critical Conditions is a breathtaking chronicle of fourteen years of revolt, war, suffering, loss, displacement, and liberation. In this powerful translation, Hadi Abdullah’s narration of his death-defying involvement as a frontline media activist provides both first-hand accounts of pivotal moments in the Syrian war, and deeply personal insight into the contrasted emotions Syrian revolutionaries have experienced during their long struggle for freedom and dignity. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the lived realities of the Syrian conflict.”
—Thomas Pierret, Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds (IREMAM)

This memoir is a great gift to the collective memory of the Syrian revolution. It captures not only events, but the heartbeat of a people who rose with conviction against oppression. What makes this work remarkable is its sincerity: it speaks in the language of the streets, of those who bled, of those who stayed human in the face of devastation. It preserves the voices of the ordinary — the brave, the frightened, the hopeful — all of whom refused to yield to silence.

My hope is that Hadi Abdullah continues to write from this same well of lived truth, loyal to the people and their struggle rather than to any authority or shifting power. The strength of this memoir lies in its independence — in refusing to be claimed, framed, or instrumentalized. If this independence is protected, the book will remain not just a personal testimony, but a lasting monument to a revolution made by human beings who dared to imagine a different world.
—Dr Rahaf Aldoughli, University of Lancaster

“Critical Conditions is a gripping, devastating, and inspiring account of determination and displacement amid the losses and victories sustained by Syrian revolutionaries throughout their struggle to topple the Assad regime. Journalist, friend, husband, father, media activist, and writer, Hadi Abdullah describes more than a decade spent in motion and in limbo, displaced from his hometown of al-Qusayr to navigate the unsettled life-worlds of “liberated Syria.” With the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, as historians scramble to make sense of Syria’s dizzying recent history, Abdullah’s reflections from inside the unfolding events are an invaluable and breathtaking primary source. Alessandro Columbu’s vital and propulsive translation vividly brings these stories to life for the English-language reader.”
—Max Weiss, Professor of History, Princeton University and author of Revolutions Aesthetic: A Cultural History of Ba’thist Syria

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hadi Abdullah is a Syrian reporter and activist. Born in Homs in 1988, he rose to prominence in Syria in 2011 and 2012 when he covered the siege of Homs at the hands of the Syrian regime. In 2016, he won the prestigious Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize in the citizen journalist category. He currently resides in Homs in Syria and has worked for various Syrian opposition networks, including Syria TV. He is active on Instagram and Telegram.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Alessandro Columbu is Senior Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Westminster. Originally from Sardinia, Alessandro learned Arabic in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and earned his PhD in Arabic literature from the University of Edinburgh. His latest publication is Zakariyya Tamir and the politics of the Syrian short story – Modernity, gender and authoritarianism published by IB Tauris. He won the 2023 edition of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding for his translation of Zakariyya Tamir’s Sour Grapes, published by Syracuse University Press.