In this review for The Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks assesses Elliot Ackerman's novel "Dark at the Crossing," which follows Haris Abadi, an Iraqi-American former interpreter, as he travels to the Turkish-Syrian border hoping to join the fight against the Assad regime.

An American Adrift at the Turkish Border

Sacks describes how Haris, robbed of his money and passport, is taken in by Amir and Daphne, Syrian exiles from Aleppo living in Gaziantep, and how Ackerman's own reporting from the Turkish borderlands sharpens the novel's sense of a makeshift society built on bribery and displacement.

Abandonment on the Syrian Frontier

Sacks identifies abandonment as the novel's central theme, from Daphne's search for her daughter's body to Haris's own inability to belong fully to either the country he left or the one that gave him citizenship.

A War Without Clean Sides

Sacks credits Ackerman, following "Green on Blue," with again refusing easy moral lines, portraying a conflict in which the Assad regime, the Free Army, and the Daesh all blur together in the eyes of those simply trying to survive it.

Read the Full Review

This review originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

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