Siwar Al-Assad On Writing, Literary Influences And Character
The Syrian-born novelist on writing to understand, the books that shaped him, and why character begins with listening.
Author:Emily SanchezReviewer:Elisa MuellerOct 14, 20260 Shares17 Views
In a 2025 self-interview, Siwar al-Assadanswered the question of why he writes in six words: “I don’t write to escape. I write to understand.”His books have moved through romance, historical fiction, conflict and cultural memory, but he describes the impulse behind them in simpler terms. Inspiration, he says, often begins with something small.
When al-Assad talks about where stories come from, he names details such as the scent of orange blossoms, a stray poem and the echo of laughter in a Damascus courtyard. These are starting points rather than finished ideas. A remembered sound or image may later lead him toward a character, and from there into larger subjects such as history, displacement or conflict.
Many of those details reach back to a childhood he left early. Al-Assad left Syria at nine, then continued his education in Europe, including time in Switzerland and Great Britain before studying law at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. By the time he began publishing fiction, he had spent years in different linguistic and cultural settings. In his own writing about craft, he connects that experience to the way he approaches characters, dialogue and cultural difference.
The connection is clearest in language. French and English became his principal writing languages, while Arabic and Spanish are also part of his multilingual background. He has written about how changing languages changes his thought process, as well as the rhythm of a sentence and the emotional register available to a character. For him, translation goes beyond equivalent words. Tone, intention, silence and pacing also have to carry across.
The same range appears in his reading. Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and Nizar Qabbani’s poetryare among the works and writers he names as influences. He credits Salih with showing him the tension and beauty of colonial displacement, Hugo with the scale of moral redemption, and Qabbani with combining tenderness and resistance. Their styles differ, but each places private feeling under social or historical pressure, a tension al-Assad also returns to in his own fiction.
Influence, however, only takes a writer so far. Al-Assad’s more persistent concern is whether a character feels true once the research and imagination begin. In an essay on writing across cultures, he describes the moment a writer realizes that dialogue may sound correct while the feeling underneath it is wrong. His response is practical: research, listen and admit what you do not know.
A Coeur Perdu gave him one test of that approach. Its protagonist has undergone a heart transplant, an experience al-Assad had not lived himself. Before writing the character, he says he spoke with transplant recipients and read testimonies about fear, resilience and the ways trauma can alter a person’s sense of self. The medical facts mattered, but his real concern was whether the character’s inner life felt credible.
Le temps d’une saison required a different kind of research. Set across 1920s Paris and New York, the novel asked him to look beyond period detail and consider the social pressures surrounding his characters. He has written about researching what freedom meant to people in that setting, how prejudice entered ordinary spaces and which emotional realities conventional histories might leave out.
His concern with flattening people also has a personal dimension. The Assad surname brings a public history that sits beside any discussion of his writing. Rifaat al-Assad is his father, and Bashar al-Assad is his first cousin.Those family associations have shaped how he is introduced in public coverage. In his writing about craft, al-Assad argues against a similar reduction on the page. A character, in his view, has to remain an individual before becoming a symbol of a country, conflict or community.
Syria’s war later changed the material he found himself writing.Al-Assad has said that he began with an interest in love, longing and memory rather than conflict. As the war continued, absence, uncertainty and survival moved closer to the center of his stories. The shift changed the emotional pressure of the work without making every novel a political statement.
Writing about conflict created another problem: how to use suffering without exploiting it. In his discussion of refugees and fiction drawn from real events, al-Assad argues for restraint, especially when the experience belongs to someone else. Trauma, as he describes it, should affect how a person behaves and decides. It should not function as a quick device for emotional impact.
He measures that approach partly by the responses he remembers from readers. Al-Assad has said that the feedback that stays with him is rarely about plot. He remembers readers who recognized something private in a character, including experiences of migration or silence that felt familiar to them. For him, those reactions suggest that the research and attention to character have reached beyond technique.
Recognition is important to him, but he does not want pain to become the final note. When asked what connects his literary inspirations, he points to hope. His definition is not especially sentimental. It leaves room for displacement, loss and moral uncertainty while refusing to make despair the only possible conclusion.
Hope also does not require simple characters. People, al-Assad writes, are “complicated, self-contradictory, layered.”The phrase captures a large part of his writing philosophy. Characters should be allowed to want incompatible things, misunderstand themselves and change without becoming illustrations of an argument.
Al-Assad ultimately describes writing in practical terms: listen, research, pay attention to cadence and be suspicious of easy versions of people. The politics attached to his name remain part of his public identity, but the creative process he describes is focused on individual behavior and voice. For him, the standard is straightforward, a character should feel like a person before functioning as an idea.
Emily Sanchez
Author
Emily Sanchez, a Fashion Journalist who graduated from New York University, brings over a decade of experience to her writing. Her articles delve into fashion trends, celebrity culture, and the fascinating world of numerology.
Emily's unique perspective and deep industry knowledge make her a trusted voice in fashion journalism.
Outside of her work, she enjoys photography, attending live music events, and practicing yoga for relaxation.
Elisa Mueller
Reviewer
Elisa Mueller, a Kansas City native, grew up surrounded by the wonders of books and movies, inspired by her parents' passion for education and film.
She earned bachelor's degrees in English and Journalism from the University of Kansas before moving to New York City, where she spent a decade at Entertainment Weekly, visiting film sets worldwide.
With over 8 years in the entertainment industry, Elisa is a seasoned journalist and media analyst, holding a degree in Journalism from NYU. Her insightful critiques have been featured in prestigious publications, cementing her reputation for accuracy and depth.
Outside of work, she enjoys attending film festivals, painting, writing fiction, and studying numerology.
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