Sylvia Khoury Selected Works

Yasmin, a young Syrian refugee, spends her days tethered to an electric power strip in a Greek refugee camp. Once a middle-class student in Aleppo whose life was dictated by the expectations of men, her sheltered existence has been shattered by a brutal civil war. In the war-torn world of the refugee camp, Yasmin finds that she must betray everything she once knew and valued in order to survive.

With the constant buzz of American drones above the Pakistani countryside, a young woman fears for the safety and sanity of her family. Thousands of miles away, the drone pilot in Nevada tasked with watching her family becomes increasingly removed from his own life. Against the Hillside examines the cost of wars fought at distance on both the observer and the observed.

Taroon, a former interpreter for the US military, lives in hiding from the Taliban in his sister Afiya’s home in Kabul, Afghanistan. As Taroon restlessly awaits news from the hospital on the eve of his first child’s birth, his brother-in-law Jawid works to protect him from dangers lurking outside the apartment walls. Selling Kabul examines loyalty, empty promises, and what it means to be left behind.