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 whose outspoken husband disappeared mysteriously thirteen years before in Beirut, decides to move forward with her life and have him declared dead. She has returned to Beirut to celebrate her engagement to 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.