Readings in Syrian Prison Literature: The Poetics of Human Rights

A valuable and insightful contribution to the study of Syrian prison literature and literature on human rights. . . . A book that engages the literature of one of the greatest human rights tragedies of our current moment and places that literature in a critical and historical context. Alexandra S. Moore, Binghamton University

In this beautifully-written and timely book, R. Shareah Taleghani teaches us to think not so much of rights as of acts, not so much of individuals as a reconceptualization of what collectivity might be, and not so much of a utopianism as an affirmation of the ongoing struggle against the carceral regime--at once in Syria and in the global, proliferating forms of penal confinement. Jeff Sacks, University of California, Riverside

Taleghani makes a powerful case that it is precisely by appealing to universal human experience that prison literature succeeds. . . .many parts of human existence may be culturally specific, but pain, and vulnerability to pain, are truly universal. Lydia Wilson, Los Angeles Review of Books

The most comprehensive of its kind to deal with the treatment of human rights and Syrian prison literature. AJ Naddaff, Middle East Eye

Readings in Syrian Prison Literature is a timely, compassionate, and incisive work of literary scholarship.

International Journal of Middle East Studies