Our Hearts Burned for Home

Dear Reader,

Five years ago, we published In the Camps, Darren Byler’s searing account of life in the detention facilities where the Chinese government sends members of its Uyghur minority. Now we are publishing our second book about this remarkable ethno-religious group, and it is almost unimaginably different from the first.

Emily Feng, an intrepid foreign correspondent for NPR, embedded with a group of Uyghurs who had fled their home province in China, not wanting to be put in the camps, and made their way to Syria, where they became fighters on the anti-government side of that country’s long-running civil war. As Feng tells their story, it is a mistake to cast the Uyghurs in Syria simply as Islamic jihadists, even though they were fighting alongside them. Many were searching for a place to live safely beyond the reach of the Chinese government, and for some, fighting became the most viable way to survive.

Over time, though, they became highly skilled fighters—on behalf of the side that won the war. Now they face a choice: should they stay in Syria and become part of the country’s power structure, or should they use their now well-honed military prowess to return to their native region and try to wrest it from China’s control?

This is a highly unlikely story that illustrates some of the strange permutations that globalization takes. Feng tells it with consummate narrative skill and empathy.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Lemann
Director, Columbia Global Reports