As seen and heard on 60 Minutes, This American Life, and in The New York Times — a frontline eyewitness account of the Syrian Revolution from prizewinning journalist and activist Hadi Abdullah.

"A masterclass in the art of being human." —ArabLit

"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

"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)

“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