Robin Yassin-Kassab was born in west London in 1969. Except for six months in Beirut, he grew up in England and Scotland. He has lived and worked in London, France, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Oman. He is the author of The Road from Damascus, a novel published by Hamish Hamilton and Penguin, and by il Saggiatore in Italy. He is currently working on a second novel. Robin co-edits (with Ziauddin Sardar) the Critical Muslim, a quarterly magazine that looks like a book. He is also a co-editor and regular contributor to PULSE, recently listed by Le Monde Diplomatique as one of its five favorite websites.
While many anti-Libyan commentators have felt free to make sweeping predictions about Libya and the Libyans without actually possessing any knowledge of the people or the country, the people are by no means passive and are not in the mood to exchange one tyranny with another.