Waiting For The Revolution To End

‘Waiting for the Revolution to End is a precious addition to the sparse anthropological literature on the afterlives of revolutionary and utopian hopes after a political and military defeat of incommensurable magnitude.’
Anthropology of the Middle East

‘Waiting for the Revolution to End: Syrian displacement, time and subjectivity is a captivating and rich ethnography of a revolution from below… the book adds in innovative ways to the literature on revolution, political action, martyrdom, refugee policies in the Global South, (im)mobilities, temporalities, and future imaginations in displacement. The book powerfully shows the lasting impact of the revolution on some of its protagonists, resulting in modifications of social relations, gender norms, the experience of space and time, and the shifting of future horizons.’
International Migration Review

‘sure to become a significant reference work within the literature on revolution and exile’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

‘Through investigation of revolution as both driver and object of change, the book provides valuable insights into the ongoing conversations on the outcomes of the Arab Spring.’ Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies

‘Waiting for the Revolution to End gives us both a refreshingly complex account of [a] reconfiguration of Syrian everyday life, and a method whereby analysts may remove the scales from our eyes to see the revolutionary activity in what was previously hidden.’
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication

‘Waiting for the Revolution to End is essential reading for scholars and students wanting to understand the temporal and affective orientations at play in the aftermath of the Syrian revolution. Al-Khalili presents a lucid ethnography of revolutionary hopes, defeat, and displacement hereby offering a sustained theoretical engagement with the social, political and religious forces that undergird Syrian existence. .’
Andreas Bandak, University of Copenhagen

‘Although so much has been said about the Syrian revolution, surprisingly little has been written about what it did to the selves, hopes, and lives of those who joined it but were defeated. Waiting for the Revolution to End is a very important and urgently needed contribution that tells the story of the revolution as it is understood by ordinary Syrians who turned into revolutionaries by participating in the uprising from its beginnings in 2011 and 2012, when the possibility of a non-violent overcoming of a violent regime still appeared within reach. Writing through the experience of living among displaced Syrians in Gaziantep, Al-Khalili tells us something that political analyses from above so often miss: the transformational power of participation in the revolution, and the cosmogonic change it effected in the minds and lives of people while they were tragically defeated. Speaking of defeat rather than failure of Syrian revolutionaries, Waiting for the Revolution to End weaves a rich, emphatic, convincing, tragic yet also hopeful story of the possibility of dignity..’
Samuli Schielke, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

‘Charlotte Al-Khalili’s stunning and moving ethnography is a landmark in the study of revolution, social change and mobility. Through an extraordinary portrayal of the lives, hopes and fears of Syria’s exiled revolutionaries in their “capital”, Al-Khalili transforms understandings of how migration shapes revolutionary subjectivity, how grassroots revolutionary activists theorize revolutionary outcomes, and how revolutionaries reorganize families and networks to keep ideals of social transformation alive.’
Alice Wilson, University of Sussex

‘The stories reported in Waiting for the Revolution to End shows Syrians changing their lives despite the tragic failure to transform their country into a liveable space for dignified collective life. While the ethnological research of Al- Khalili focuses on individuals in very specific conditions, narrating their shattering experiences with their own words, the book is far from an exoticization of Syrians and their struggle. Charlotte Al-Khalili gives voice to dispossessed and exiled Syrians with empathy and care, universalising their stories and bringing the Syrian narratives to a fruitful dialogue with philosophical and theoretical tools developed in relation to other contexts. This is a very serious book and a very significant addition to a growing library on Syria which is microcosm in a world leading itself more and more to be a macro-Syria.’ Yassin al-Haj Saleh, author of The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy