Publisher's Weekly Review
This ambitious but flawed graphic novel, by an author who escaped war-torn Syria, portrays how a group of physicians, patients, and their friends keep an underground hospital running, evading the Assad-backed army. Resourceful young Yasmin runs the hospital after she and Sophie, a documentary filmmaker, are shuttled past the militarized Turkish border to undertake their mission. Romance subplots blossom, between Yasmin and charismatic doctor Fawaz, as well as between army deserter Haval, who assists at the hospital, with Zahabiah, who comes from a conservative family. After a bombing, former patients rise to new roles in the revolution, like taxi driver Walid, who assumes for himself the title of prince and gains followers, including Salem, who suffers from mysterious memory loss, but takes up arms to follow this new leader. The daily death toll is an expository device used to haunting effect, but other facts are redundant, like defining in a text box the Russian origin of each weapon supplied to the army. The apparent heavy reliance on photo and video reference in drawing scenes leads to an awkward art style, and characters move stiffly, with masklike expressions. A clumsy sense of composition throughout gives the work an unrooted sense of place, unfortunate for a story about very concrete devastation. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Syrian cartoonist Sulaiman's debut novel follows the desperate lives, noble struggles, and violent deaths of people tied to an underground hospital during the Syrian civil war.The book opens with a dozen headshots and short biographies of characters, including Yasmin, the young woman who founded the eponymous hospital to help the rebels battling the Syrian government and to fulfill her father's dream of opening a hospital, which had been thwarted by bureaucracy and corruption; Abu Taysir, a militia leader and former political prisoner in his 60s navigating the web of factions engaged in the conflict, including the nascent Islamic State; the Colonel, a merciless commander in the Syrian army; Haval, a philosophical army deserter who hangs around the hospital to be near his girlfriend, Zahabiah, a refugee who works as the cook; and Salem, a patient whose head wound has dashed his memory, leaving him unsure which side he is on. A throughline involves Yasmin's childhood friend Sophie, a French journalist Yasmin helps to sneak back into Syria to document the war, but the book ranges far and wide, giving each character at least one solid beat to dramatize the situation's complexity while also including omniscient sequences crafted from news footage and YouTube videos and even a brief, psychedelic aside into the historical roots of the Shiite-Sunni divide. The art's flat blacks, stark whites, and heavy lines give the work an almost impressionistic feel, bringing to the real-world images a rotoscoped look and simplifying both fact and fiction to touchstones (furrowed brows, falling tears, spattered blood). This notion also encapsulates the work overallexpressive and representative but not necessarily deep or rounded. As Sulaiman says in his postscript, the conflict is too complex to be fully captured; nevertheless, here is a striking look.A heartbreaking and eye-opening primer to the quagmire of a generation. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This graphic-novel debut by an eyewitness to the early days of the Syrian civil war centers on the staff and patients at an underground hospital treating victims of the Assad regime. Initially, the idealistic supporters of the Arab Spring are confident that Assad's downfall is imminent. But over the months, the situation deteriorates as the bombings grow more and more devastating. The myriad armed opposition groups adopt increasingly brutal tactics, and the Islamic extremist factions become an even more immediate threat to the hospital workers than the army. Sulaiman, who fled Syria in 2011, witnessed the torture and murder of many friends. Although fictional, the story, based on his own experiences, evokes the urgent graphic journalism of Joe Sacco and Sarah Glidden. The heavily inked, high-contrast black-and-white drawings, occasionally incorporating inked-over images from YouTube, produce a dramatic effect that sometimes sacrifices clarity for the sake of impact. Sulaiman's heartfelt work puts a harrowingly human face to the relentless headlines and news footage of the still-ongoing conflict.--Flagg, Gordon Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Syria's ongoing civil war began as mostly peaceful people's protests against Bashar al-Assad's repressive regime. But when Assad responded with violence, the opposition expanded to include armed revolutionaries plus groups of radical Islamists, some with Daesh/ISIS affiliation. Sulaiman, who fled Syria in 2011, based this fictionalized account on actual events. It's 2012, and pharmacist Yasmin runs a clandestine hospital near the Turkish border, treating the wounded without taking sides. Around her the chaos intensifies and more people die, combatants and civilians alike. Front-matter profiles introduce the characters: clinicians, patients, and locals of all factions, each with allegiances and betrayals. Sulaiman works in stark, expressionist black and white, his images like glimpses lit by explosions seen while running. In some panels, text blocks identify weaponry as "made in Russia" or "made in the U.S.," indicating outside support for the various parties in the struggle. VERDICT This devastating, intimate view of a complex international tragedy bypasses easy labeling to empathize with all participants as victims. An English PEN's Writers in Translation grantee and a compelling read for book groups and concerned Anglophones.-MC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
![Cover image for Freedom hospital : [a Syrian story]](/client/assets/5.1294/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Cover image for Freedom hospital : [a Syrian story]")