Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life

An acclaimed Syrian journalist crafts a vital portrait of October 7, 2023, and its aftermath through the harrowing yet life-affirming accounts of 26 Palestinians.

Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each of them about their experience of October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like since that pivotal date. In Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life—a title adapted from one of the flyers dropped on the residents of Gaza minutes before a bombing—Yazbek captures the raw, chilling accounts of ordinary civilians aged 13 to 65, who have witnessed what history may remember as one of the most savage military offensives of our time.

Their stories reveal a nightmarish dystopia, where each survivor has endured unimaginable loss—homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated—and many have been treated in hospitals ravaged by Israeli attacks. But these survivors remain determined to share their experiences, and cling to the hope that their voices will resonate.

More than a record of horrors for posterity, this breathtaking collection testifies to the power of education and writing, which remind us of our common humanity.“A work of profound ethical significance, a direct offering of words from voices that should never be silenced. Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life is almost too painful to read, but so deeply humane and important that it compels us not to look away.” —Preti Taneja, author of AftermathSamar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist who has been a prominent advocate for human rights, and more specifically women’s rights, in Syria. In 2010, Yazbek was selected as one of the “39 most promising authors under the age of 40” by Beirut39, organized by the Hay Festival. In 2011, she took part in the popular uprising against the Assad regime and was forced into exile soon after. In 2012 she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize “International writer of courage” for her book In the Crossfire, and received the Swedish Tucholsky Prize and the Dutch Oxfam/PEN Prize the following year. In 2022, Yazbek was chosen by the Royal Society of Literature as one of twelve International Writers. Yazbek has published two short-story collections, seven novels, and four nonfiction literary narratives. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024, 2021, and 2019. Her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.