A dictator’s wife, overthrown and awaiting trial, pleads her case to a young female lawyer, while also drawing her into a tangled web of lies and dark, dangerous secrets. This dazzling and devastating debut is a Lead Launch for Headline Review for Spring 2021. Berry quit the newsroom and travelled to eastern Europe for three months of research. She began in Romania and immediately found herself in the midst of a street protest with hundreds of thousands of people calling for the government’s resignation. Among those who did well out of Asma’s rise was her own father, Fawaz Akhras. Soon after Asma married Bashar, Akhras established the British-Syrian Society, an organisation in London that drummed up political and financial support for Syria. He co-ordinated the society’s activities with Asma’s organisation, attracting a crowd of rich Syrians. He did have an eye for women, often dating his brother’s manicured discards. But the choice of wife wasn’t his alone. When Basil died in a car crash in 1994 (reportedly while racing to Damascus airport in his Mercedes), the fate of the Assad dynasty suddenly fell on Bashar’s shoulders. Bashar’s older brother, Basil, served in the Syrian army, drove fast cars and chased women. Bashar, by contrast, was “hard-working, punctual, went every day to college and avoided the wild life,” said Wafic Said, a wealthy Syrian expat. He listened to Phil Collins and the Electric Light Orchestra, drank green tea and cycled around town. Unlike his father, who retained a peasant brogue, Bashar spoke the refined lilt of the Damascene elite.

Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad

The end of Elena In only a matter of days, Elena transformed from one of the most prestigious scientists in Europe to a state criminal facing a firing squad.Mary Jordan, a biographer of Melania Trump, found her more ambitious and knowing – more like Donald Trump – than is often assumed. Berry comments: “She’s very good at disappearing, even when she’s right there, behind her sunglasses.” Asma seemed a promising consort for the new Syrian leader. Queen Rania of Jordan, Sheikha Moza of Qatar, even Princess Diana in Britain, all served as models for how a glamorous first lady might become a force for reform. Syria’s secularist Baath party made it more receptive than most Arab countries to women taking public roles. “I thought the combination of these two would make Syria a heaven,” said Wafic Said, a wealthy Syrian expat who befriended the couple. It is an intriguing prism through which to consider Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model who came to America married Donald Trump in 2005. With his election a decade later, she became only the second foreign-born first lady in American history – and one of the most divisive.

Dictators From Around the World - TheClever Women Who Married Dictators From Around the World - TheClever

It continued: “She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her ‘the element of light in a country full of shadow zones’. She is the first lady of Syria.” It’s a man’s world but these women are married to the men who make this world. I wanted to explore that duality because they’re at the eye of power but it’s slightly off to the left. They’re not paid. Their role often isn’t clear,” Berry says. That seed was watered by a Saturday Night Live sketch, not about Melania Trump but Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka. It was a parody perfume advert for “Complicit: the fragrance for the woman who could stop all this – but won’t”. Reportedly stung by the bit, which starred Scarlett Johansson, Ivanka Trump told CBS News: “If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact then I’m complicit.” Yet, in reality, Elena's success was a fiction. Her reputation was falsely built up thanks to a fraudulent PhD, appointments to Central Committee positions, and extensive propaganda—all helped along by the intervention of the Securitate, Romania's brutal secret police. The path to prestigeShe isn’t a person, she’s a puppeteer. She discovers what you are, what you can and cannot bear, and uses it.’

Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a

Bashar had never needed his allies more: his British wife might help placate Western governments. He promised Asma that he would muzzle the in-laws and agreed to designate her “First Lady” (Syria’s state media started using the term only after Anisa died in 2016). Asma had finally won a seat at the table.The legal defence team for the former First Lady, who is on trial for a myriad of corruption charges and faces the death penalty if found guilty, includes two Yanussian expats, both of whom have been selected for the case based upon their nationality – by the former First Lady. This is a complex story of displacement, both at the national and the personal level. It’s fraught with fear, of the sort that is unknown to those of us who have not lived under a communist rule. The author has recreated this sense of dark urgency, it descends over you while reading like a suffocation as you feel the terror of living with the secrets of the past, secrets that are still too dangerous to reveal.