The battles between artists and totalitarian states resonate widely across cultures. But how those struggles play out in particular nations reveals a rich weave of local color and individual genius. In Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official (Duke University Press), Miriam Cooke digs into how the contest is waged between Syria's Baathist rulers and its artists.
Ms. Cooke, a professor of Arabic literature and culture at Duke University, lived in Syria for six months in 1995 and 1996, meeting a variety of key figures in its cultural scene. Early on she concluded that "the contradiction between the official emphasis on culture and the stifling atmosphere in which intellectuals functioned seemed impossible to negotiate." Despite the chill on free expression, she found that public pronouncements by Syria's longtime president, Hafez al-Assad (who died in 2000), about the importance of intellectual and artistic freedom were ubiquitous. (The most famous, she observes, was his declaration that "culture is humanity's highest need.")
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