Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution

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.

"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.

Hadi Abdullah is 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.

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 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding for his translation of Zakariyya Tamir’s Sour Grapes, published by Syracuse University Press.