"The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria" is as much an account of Syria as it is a beautifully crafted narrative of a Syrian family and an independent first-generation Syrian-American woman.
It breaks through the single-lensed generalizations and headline tickers and dives deeply into the lives of Syrians with stories that smoothly weave in and out of a complex political context. In sharing the stories of her friends and families, author Alia Malek is sharing the story of a nation.
The book is bracketed by Malek's quest to reclaim and renovate her grandmother's apartment in Damascus, which had been taken in 1970 from her family by an obstinate tenant protected by lopsided laws. Malek, a Christian whose parents' professional careers as a physician and pharmacist lead them to settle in Baltimore, had long had a nostalgic desire to return to her parents' homeland to which she was exposed during long visits with family as a child.
