Reviews

Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story by Hamid Sulaiman

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patchworkbunny's review against another edition

4.0

Freedom Hospital is a mix of fact and fiction, based around an underground Syrian hospital which tends to injured rebels. At the start of the book, it feels like the rebels wanted a peaceful solution to the country's problems. As time goes on, and the death toll climbs, they are turned to violence too. This leaves a space for extremists to recruit those who feel failed by both sides and we see how Isis tried to take advantage of the situation.

As well as these three factions, of course there are those who just want to get on with their lives (along with their human rights so quashed by Assad). The daily death count printed at the top of the pages is a saddenign reminder of the senseless loss of the conflict.

Assad's regime is propped up by foreign weapons, and throughout the pages, the tanks, planes and artillery are tagged by who provided what (a lot from Russia, but tother countries aren't innocent either).

If you're quite well-informed of the Syria situation, I'm not sure reading this will add much, but it serves as a good introduction. It's not an intensely personal approach as Hamid has used anecdotes from many of his friends who stayed behind, rather than writing an account of his own experience.

I'm not a huge fan of the artwork but its sparseness does fit with the subject matter here.

jwinchell's review against another edition

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2.0

After much deliberation, I am abandoning this book that has so much potential to inform us about Syria and resistance. The super detailed double page of character bios did not get off to a good start- how am I supposed to keep all these people separate? The jagged black lines meant I couldn’t tell many female or male characters apart, and I wanted the story to carry the context for who they were rather than paging back to the intro all the time. Maybe I’m lazy, but I felt the art and the style asked more of me than I was willing to give. Disappointing.

alp_books's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

ixjewell's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective tense fast-paced

4.0

catmisae's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

3.0

Content Warnings

samdalefox's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging hopeful informative sad fast-paced

3.0

I commend what Sulaiman has acheived here. Freedom Hospital acts as a kind of introduction to what the Syrian revolution was/is (the civil war is ongoing), who the main players are and how the war affects Syrian people. However, it's a much more personal story, rather than focussing on specific historical events in great detail, these events provide the background for the characters where you see them live their every day lives and what choices they make to survive. It's humanising.

I found the resilience of Yasmine rebuilding the hospital again and again hopeful and inspiring, Much needed after continuously hearing her saying she believes the war will be short; where a decade later unfortunately we know it is still ongoing. Overall the novel does a good job at depicting the never ending violence, the brutal, complex, frustrating commandeering by other parties over the original conflict and a small glimmer of hope.

Pros

The artwork worked well. Using only black and white and dramatic full page panels really highlights the stark violence in the story.
I appreciated the character profiles given at the front of the novel and the explanatory footnotes throughout about what different names meant, I definitely benefitted from these.
The range of characters introduced showcased how the war affects people from different walks of life. Women men, Sunni, Shiite, soldiers, academics, medics etc.
The military equipment pictured is labelled with its model number and the country that sold it to either side. I think this an incredibly effective tool for indicating the countries complicit in funding the violence (US, UK, France, Russia).

Cons

So much is covered, I don't feel we get enough time with each of the characters to get to know them well enough to feel deeply about them. For example
Salem and his fake memory loss actually being a Syrian Intelligence Agent and imprisoning Fawaz?! Then being shot by the colonel?! WHAT? It all happened too fast, it was hard to really empathise.
Because so much is covered I feel the story doesn't flow as well as expected, but that could be intentional with the time jumps and being split into 4 seasons. Time does flow differently when experiencing war.
A big thing missing is the representation of women wearing hijab as active agents. The one hijabi, Zahabiah , did very little, and actually
stopped wearing her hijab by the end of the novel. Hopefully, through her own choice and not due to Western expectations/pressure/Islamophobia, but the story never actuallymakes this clear.