An English PEN Award–winning collection of personal testimony from participants in the Arab Spring   As revolution swept through the Arab world in spring of 2011, much of the writing that reached the West came via analysts and academics, experts and expats. We heard about Facebook posts and tweeted calls to action, but what was missing was testimony from on-the-ground participants—which is precisely what Layla Al-Zubaidi and Matthew Cassel have brought together in Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution . These essays and profoundly moving, often harrowing, firsthand accounts span the region from Tunisia to Syria and include contributors ranging from student activists to seasoned journalists—half of whom are women. This unique collection explores just how deeply politics can be held within the personal and highlights the power of writing in a time of revolution. *Starred Review* By now, you’ve heard of the Arab Spring. But most of the secondhand accounts you’ve read were composed in the safety of a news studio. Or, at best, from the balcony of a hotel overlooking the bloody streets of Cairo and Benghazi. For readers interested in the personal, firsthand stories of the young men and women who stood and fought in those chaotic city squares throughout the Middle East, the English PEN Award–winning Diaries adds a vastly different, historically vital perspective on the Arab Spring’s revolutions-in-progress. Beginning in Tunisia, where student activist Malek Sghiri is kidnapped and tortured for joining a protest group at his university, and ending in Syria, where the academic turned poet Khawla Dunia examines her country’s history of activism and dissent under the Assad dynasty, these eye-opening, untold accounts from students and local journalists alike are as essential to the historical record as they are to the outsider looking to understand what the Arab Spring is really about. The voices here are unfiltered, uncompromising, and unafraid, as the 26-year-old Sghiri proves when he tells his torturers, “I hope that God grants you a long life, that you might get to interrogate my son as well.” --Adam Morgan Praise for Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution: Voices from Tunis to Damascus "There is an undeniable power to the presence of time and movement in these accounts." — New York Times Book Review “With both poetic flourish and eyewitness intensity, the events of the Arab Spring are rendered newly relevant and visceral in this anthology of first-person accounts from Tunisia to Syria. In this haunting collection, editors Cassel, Al-Zubaidi, and Roderick present breathtakingly beautiful writing by young people who witnessed the remarkable events of 2011, and manage to accomplish what the media did not: provide context and meaning to a movement that confounded existing narratives of the Middle East.”  —Publishers Weekly Starred Review   “For readers interested in the personal, firsthand stories of the young men and women who stood and fought in those chaotic city squares throughout the Middle East, the English PEN Award–winning Diaries adds a vastly different, historically vital perspective on the Arab Spring’s revolutions-in-progress…these eye-opening, untold accounts from students and local journalists alike are as essential to the historical record as they are to the outsider looking to understand what the Arab Spring is really about.” —Booklist Starred Review "Captures [the Arab Spring's] courage on page after page...consistently vivid and far more personal than most journalism." -- The Dallas Morning News “Intimate vignettes…this adds an emotional, personal layer to the myriad voices.” — Kirkus Reviews "T he writing is accessible -- in addition to being lyrical, melancholy, and spirited." — Biographile "[ Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution ] is not the revolution itself, but its continuation with literary means. As people in the Arab world recaptured the public sphere, this book opens a literary space, in which the actors and authors of the revolutions can meet and express free of fear. It is a book that nobody can avoid if he wants to understand what is happening in the Arab world."— Diesseits “What this anthology makes abundantly clear is that the young people behind these uprisings, though often optimistic, were not blinded by the fervour of revolution but were in fact acutely aware of the obstacles that lay ahead.” — London School of Economics Review of Books "If ever there is a book that should be championed, it is [ Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution ]. . . . Among the most moving, inspiring, and revealing pieces of non-fiction we've come across in some time." —The National (U.A.E.) "[ Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution ] provides a terrifying insight into the world of authoritarian regimes where freedom and democracy are alien concepts. Each of the eight accounts in this impressive anthology is accessible and illuminating." —The Independent (U.K.) "These stories of the Arab Spring