Nabil Mamlouk

My experience with memoir literature has generally been unrewarding, and this holds particularly true for the first volume of the memoirs of former Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, entitled The Missing Narrative (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2015). From its lyrical, subjective, and impressionistic opening, the book appears to promise the reader a work of personal reflection, only to draw him into a reading of political history written with an unqualified bias toward the Assad regime and the figure of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. Assad between Political Mythology and Image-Making