Damascus Diaries

When Peter Clark arrived in Damascus 1992 to open the new British Council office, he was not to know that the next five years were to give him a unique window on the upper echelons of Syrian society in the last few years of Hafez Al-Assad’s rule. Here we see the dramas and routines of everyday life played out against the backdrop of the world’s oldest continually inhabited city on the eve of collapse into civil war. Enchanting and alarming by turns, everyday events combine to paint a vivid and almost nostalgic picture of life in this remarkable city.

This highly entertaining and highly personal account of life in Damascus in the 1990s paints the portrait of a city now immensely remote from the world we see on our news screens today.

All author royalties are donated to the Saeed.

Peter Clark, OBE, is a translator, writer, and consultant. For thirty years he worked for the British Council in Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Syria. He has translated eight works by contemporary Arab writers including fiction by Muhammad al-Murr, Liana Badr, and Ulfat Idilbi, as well as drama, poetr, and history. He has written books on Marmaduke Pickthall and Wilfred Thesiger. Peter is a tour consultant, advising on cultural tourism in Turkey and Syria, a trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and a contributing editor of Banipal