In an effort to distinguish political repression from other forms of social, religious, and sexual forms of violence (without suggesting an exclusionary distinction between them), Suleiman reviews the literary and novelistic representations of political repression in Syria, and focuses on political imprisonment, dictatorship, and related practices of repression and human rights abuses. This investigation offers the reader an insight into the realm of political repression lexicon, exploring the terminology used in this field, from interrogations to torture and life in prison, to living underground and in hiding, to the larger framework that breeds all these terms—an expansive network of organizations and individuals in a dictatorship, which, in addition to the dictator, his  entourage, family, party, or repressive organs, entails a way of life, relations, interests, details, and the very air that is inhaled by an individual and society. Literary representations of political repression in Syria adequately portray this reality, even when reality in this case may indeed be harsher than fiction. This study also investigates a parallel observed between the rise of the novel in Syria as the prime form of literary expression—at the expense of poetry, theatre, and short stories—and the escalation of political repression since the rise of the Baath party to power in 1963.