Lindsey Hilsum | The New York Review of Books

More Than Accomplices

How do we determine the agency of female participants in genocidal regimes, where male supremacy often goes hand in hand with ethnic chauvinism?

Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice

by Izabela Steflja and Jessica Trisko Darden

July 1, 2021 issue

Family members returning to what remains of their neighborhood after years of being displaced by ISIS, Raqqa, Syria, June 2018; photograph by Ivor Prickett from his book End of the Caliphate, which includes an essay by Anthony Loyd and has just been published by Steidl

Women’s Business

In Syria, women are journalists, filmmakers, and fighters.

Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS

by Azadeh Moaveni

Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World

edited by Zahra Hankir, with a foreword by Christiane Amanpour

For Sama

a film directed by Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts

December 5, 2019 issue

The Photographs of Susan Meiselas

Susan Meiselas wanted to explore collective memory. “The witness has always to protect memory from erasure.” But not all young Nicaraguans welcomed the history lesson.

June 8, 2019

A woman practicing driving in preparation for the end of the ban on female drivers, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, June 2018; photograph by Iman al-Dabbagh

‘I Can’t Believe I’m in Saudi Arabia’

In Saudi Arabia, change is designed precisely to curtail political upheaval or a demand for democracy.

Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia

edited by Madawi Al-Rasheed

Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening

by Manal al-Sharif

October 11, 2018 issue

Syrian refugees hiding from Turkish border guards near Afrin, northern Syria, June 2015; illustration from Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple’s Brothers of the Gun

The Smartphone War

The war in Syria has occurred at a time when the first response of many caught up in a crisis is to get out their phones and start filming.

No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria

by Rania Abouzeid

Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War

by Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple

Journalism in Times of War

edited by Awad Joumaa and Khaled Ramadan

Becoming the Story: War Correspondents since 9/11

by Lindsay Palmer

April 19, 2018 issue

War of All Against All

Syria was not the cradle of the Islamic State, but the revolution created a vacuum into which the militants stepped.

The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy

by Yassin al-Haj Saleh, with a foreword by Robin Yassin-Kassab

The Caliphate at War: Operational Realities and Innovations of the Islamic State

by Ahmed S. Hashim

We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria

by Wendy Pearlman

Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria

by Nikolaos Van Dam

November 23, 2017 issue