A Hospital in Homs

The novel tells the story of a young Syrian doctor whom the Ministry of Health sent from the capital Damascus to the city of Homs as part of his -post graduate education in late 2010. He witnessed how the city and the country went into full-scale civil war in 2011. The conflict between the regime, dominated by the Ba’ath Party under President Bashar El Assad and a fragmented but widely-supported, increasingly Islamist- dominated opposition has devastated the country and caused the deaths of over 150,000 persons, injuries of several hundred thousand and the displacement of almost half of Syria`s 23 million population during the three years of the conflict (2011-2013). Homs city is in central Syria, where one million Syrians used to live. It is the epicentre of this conflict and was the first major city to be contested and divided between the conflicting parties. The novel describes how over three years, the conflict totally changed the city, the hospital and the person himself.