The Syrian is a powerful contemporary novel of passion and betrayal, set against the brutal and bewildering outbreak of the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, 2006. Nadia, a woman who has waited 13 years for a husband who was "disappeared," finally decides to declare him dead so she can marry an American physician, Andrew Sullivan. On the eve of her engagement party, her best friend Sonia, a well-connected war correspondent, rings to tell her that her husband may still be alive in a Syrian prison. Out to get Andrew for herself, Sonia draws in the powerful head of the Syrian secret police to help her in her Byzantine manipulations. Thus begins a series of dangerous plot twists that become increasingly bloody as Nadia attempts to rescue her husband, and the border conflict with Israel escalates.