<p>A photographer captured in Syria and imprisoned for seven months recounts his story and how he became the first American ever to escape al-Qaeda.</p><p><i>'What is your name?' asked General Mohammad.<br>'Matthew' I said. I had stopped saying Matt a while ago because it means 'dead' in Arabic.</i></p><p>On New Year's Eve in 2012 Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria where he'd been photographing the intense combat of the country's civil war. Just forty-five minutes from the safety of the Turkish border he was taken prisoner by the al-Nusra Front an organization the world would come to know as the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.</p><p>Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. He would face a daily struggle just to survive. And eventually he would escape.</p><p>In this gripping raw and surprisingly funny memoir Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world's most violent Islamic extremists. Managing to keep his heritage a secret Schrier used humor to develop relationships with his captors—and to keep himself sane during the long months of captivity.</p><p><i>The Dawn Prayer (or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison) </i>is a tale of patriotism and unimaginable bleakness shot through with light of despair and friendship sacrifice and betrayal in a setting of bombed-out buildings and shifting alliances. It's the story of the first Westerner to escape al-Qaeda—not a battle-hardened soldier but an ordinary New Yorker who figured out how to set his escape plan in motion from a scene in <i>Jurassic Park</i>. From the prisoners' fiercely competitive hacky sack games and volleyball tournaments (played using a ball made of shredded orange peels and a shoelace) to his own truly nail-biting breakout Matthew Schrier's story is unforgettable—and one you won't want to miss.</p>
