Andrew Tabler’s account of his time in Syria between 2001 and 2008 is refreshing — relative to the reams of Orientalist trite other Western authors have published about the Middle East and North Africa — in that he actually spent years in the region getting to know the place, first studying Arabic and working as a journalist in Cairo and later traversing the MENA for the Oxford Business Group writing country investment reports, before eventually basing himself in Damascus. Thus his offering, “In the Lion’s Den”, is neither ‘parachute journalism’ nor the story of a doe-eyed apple-pie eater struggling to make sense of an alien Arab fantasyland — the two most common categories of expat writing on the region. Rather, Tabler — a former contributor to Executive — is candid and observant in relating the challenges of trying to comprehend the vast complexities of a country like Syria. The author
