About Siwar Al Assad
Siwar Al Assad is a multilingual Syrian-born author who has carved a distinctive literary path, writing in both French and English. Educated in Switzerland, Great Britain, and at the prestigious Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, Siwar’s novels explore themes of love, identity, justice, and cultural preservation. His published works include the romantic thriller A Coeur Perdu, its English counterpart Guard Thy Heart, the historical epic Le temps d’une saison, and the homage Palmyre pour toujours. Beyond fiction, he contributed the preface to Pourquoi ils font le Djihad. Now based in London, he also leads the Arab News Network and the Aramea Foundation. His writing reflects his deeply held belief in dialogue, heritage, and the transformative power of storytelling.
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When I first stood in the shadow of Palmyra’s ancient columns as a child, I didn’t yet understand what they meant. They were grand, yes...
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In the aftermath of war, there’s always a question: what comes first, accountability or healing? For Syria, a nation carrying both anci...
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I grew up surrounded by color, Damascene courtyards painted with jasmine, old books stacked in my father’s study, calligraphy that danc...
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There’s a dangerous temptation when writing about refugees: to reduce them to victims. It happens even with the best intentions. You wa...
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There are wounds that don’t bleed. They appear in silence, in hesitation, in the way someone pauses before answering a simple question ...
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Syria is often spoken about in the past tense. In news cycles and political debates, it’s reduced to ruins and warzones, to ceasefires ...
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I don’t always write about Syria directly. But Syria is always in what I write. You can feel it in the silence between my characters. I...
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There’s a moment every writer dreads when you stare at a character on the page and realize you might be getting them wrong. Not just in...
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There’s something about watching a character fall apart and slowly rebuild themselves. That always gets to me. Perhaps it’s because per...
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Growing up in Syria, I was immersed in stories—those told by my family, whispered in the streets, and broadcasted over the airwaves. Bu...
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