Syrian author shares PEN/Pinter prize with Carol Ann Duffy

An exiled Syrian author and journalist whose inside account of the revolution drew such ire from Syria's government that she was forced to flee the country has won a literary award from PEN for her courage. Samar Yazbek was named by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy on Monday as the international writer of courage with whom she will share the PEN/Pinter prize. The award goes to a writer who, in Pinter's own words, shows a "fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies" today. Duffy was picked as winner by judges including Pinter's widow Antonia Fraser in July, and then worked with English PEN's Writers at Risk Committee to select Yazbek, in recognition of her book A Woman in the Crossfire. The title, published in the UK by Haus, details Yazbek's opposition to the Assad regime, interspersing her own observations of the recent bloody conflict with the stories of the people at the heart of the revolution. On publication, she was denounced by her clan and harassed by the country's security forces, according to English PEN, until she was forced into exile with her young daughter