Saqi Books

For centuries, wild and strange stories have been told about the female body. Some empowering, many absurd, these myths have not only endured but continue to shape perceptions of women today.

The Shrinking Goddess explores this legacy, gathering global tales about the female form and revealing how and why generations of men have sought to interpret, control and ‘tame’ women. Mineke Schipper investigates the disappearance of the original creation figure, Mother Earth, from mainstream culture, and how women’s bodies have been imagined ever since: from the demon daughter of New Mexico with a toothed vagina, to the Japanese supermarkets and European festivals offering ‘breast puddings’ as delicacies.

Drawing on an extraordinary archive of art, literature and folklore, Schipper reclaims the female body as a place of power, creativity and possibility.

Kudsi Erguner spent his childhood in the Sufi gathering places of Istanbul, mastering the reed flute of the Turkish Mevlevi tradition; and his adulthood roaming the world, performing with the likes of Peter Brook, Jean-Michel Jarre and Peter Gabriel.

The collision of the vanishing Sufi traditions and the burgeoning ‘world music’ scene is beautifully evoked here, as Kudsi interweaves recollections from his childhood with his experiences in showbiz.

A remarkable memoir of a musician at the crossroads of East and West.

Iranian artists have been producing some of the world’s most thought-provoking and intellectually grounded artworks. 

In this landmark compendium, renowned art historian Hamid Keshmirshekan provides a thorough review of contemporary art in Iran and shows that the twentieth century was a crucial period in the country’s art and culture, when the legacies of tradition and modernism where critically reassessed.

Contemporary Iranian Art is an unprecedented introduction to Iran’s vibrant art history over the past one hundred years. This fully revised and updated edition features more than 370 colour illustrations by the country’s leading artists, including Mahmoud Bakhshi, Shadi Ghadirian, Barbad Golshiri, Marcos Grigorian, Farhad Moshiri, Shirin Neshat, Sohrab Sepehri, Mitra Tabrizian, Parviz Tanavoli and Charles Hossein Zenderoudi.

#1 Indie Bestseller

The Nile brought them life, but the Nile was not their friend.

A small farming village in North Sudan wakes up one morning to the news that a little boy has drowned. Soon after, the animals die of a mysterious illness and the date gardens catch fire and burn to the ground. The villagers whisper of a sorceress who dwells at the foot of the mountains. It is the dry season. The men have places to go, the women have work to do, the children play at the place where the river runs over its own banks. Sixteen-year-old Fatima yearns to leave the village for Khartoum.

In Khartoum, a single mother makes her way in a world that wants to keep girls and women back. As civil war swells, the political intrudes into the personal and her position in the capital becomes untenable. She must return to the village.

A Mouth Full of Salt uncovers a country on the brink of seismic change as its women decide for themselves which traditions are fit for purpose – and which prophecies it’s time to rewrite.

What drives someone to commit the unthinkable? Paul E. Mullen, one of the world’s pre-eminent forensic psychiatrists, examines the complex workings of the lone multiple murderer – a spectre haunting modern societies.

With unflinching clarity, Mullen draws on his decades assessing massacre perpetrators first-hand, bringing readers into a dark landscape populated both by killers who attained the ugly fame they had sought as well as lesser-known but equally chilling cases.

Mullen illuminates the troubling patterns that unite these murderers, such as obsessive rage; personal grievance; fascination with weapons; and yearning for infamy. Their actions are ultimately rooted in their desire for personal destruction, often culminating in suicide. He also considers the impact of media sensationalism on the killers’ grandiose fantasies, often inspiring copycat violence, and proposes steps toward better threat assessment and identification of warning signs.

Challenging myths around madness and violence, Mullen reveals the unsettling truth: lone mass killers are not incomprehensible monsters, but deeply disturbed people shaped by knowable forces that, when properly understood, can be countered effectively.

Mohand-Said Ait-Taleb is an enigma. Living in France but ravaged by memories of the war in Algeria, he has withdrawn into his own world, away from his wife and children. When his son Xavier discovers articles by Albert Camus describing the appalling conditions his father grew up in, he starts to piece together the story of his life.

Xavier retraces the steps of this dignified, illiterate and strong-willed man: from Kabylia – where starving children, like Mohand-Said, fought with dogs for scraps – to the metal factory in Normandy, where his father would spend the rest of his days, consumed with providing for his family. It is there that Xavier discovers his love of books. When he breaks with conservative family traditions and confesses his attraction to men, Xavier will find which doors slam closed and which will open.

A Man With No Title is a beautiful and moving tribute to a father, to the immigrants condemned to undertake the hardest work for meagre reward, and to the power of literature to transcend class.

Harry Silman joined the British army in 1939. As a medicalofficer under bombardment on the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940, he was one of the last soldiers to be shipped out during the mass retreat.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, his division was assigned to assist in the defence of Singapore; they arrived just before the island fell to Japanese forces in 1942. Harry spent the rest of the war in the notorious Changi POW camp and upcountry at Hellfire Pass, where he tended to the wounded and dying men who were forced to labour on the Burma Railway.Throughout, Harry kept diaries – highly secret, illegal, and dangerous for a POW. He managed to write a detailed account of his harrowing experiences in the camps when he himself was weakened and exhausted, caring as best he could for hundreds of desperately ill men. Articulate, graphic, compassionate, and lit with good humour, this is Harry’s war in his own words.

His diaries, arguably one of the most comprehensive surviving contemporaneous accounts of this period of World War Two, have been edited with great care and illuminating commentary by his daughter, Jacqueline Passman.

Achcar argues that the Arab Spring was but the beginning of a long-term revolutionary process – a perspective confirmed by a second wave of uprisings in 2019 – and outlines the requirements for a solution to the crisis; this new edition features a preface drawing a balance sheet of the upheaval’s first decade.

‘The people want’ – thus began the slogans chanted by millions of protesters in 2011 in what was dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’.  While the protests revealed a long-suppressed craving for democracy, they also laid bare a deep structural crisis.

In this landmark work, Middle East analyst Gilbert Achcar examines the socio-economic roots and political dynamics of the regional upheaval. He assesses the peculiarities of the region’s states and regimes, and sheds light on the movements that use Islam as a political banner.

For centuries, Palestinian women wrote the stories of their lives and land with a needle and thread. Their embroidery, or tatreez, inspired hundreds of artists who reinterpreted and transformed it into a symbol of Palestinian identity, steadfastness and resistance.

Narrative Threads celebrates the immense beauty and significance of Palestinian embroidery in contemporary art. Joanna Barakat documents and features more than 200 works by twenty-four established and emerging artists, who incorporate the motifs and symbolism of tatreez across diverse media – from painting, sculpture and textile to film, photography and street art. While some artists preserve traditional forms, others transform tatreez to explore themes of displacement, resilience and belonging. Together, their works offer a dynamic reflection on Palestinian heritage and identity.

With insightful essays by leading art historians Dr Tina Sherwell, Wafa Ghnaim and Rachel Dedman, Narrative Threads reveals the power of Palestinian embroidery as a visual language that recounts the past, connects us to the present and envisions a different, hopeful future.

A groundbreaking survey of the language used around queerness in the Arab world, with contributions by leading Arab queer writers, thinkers and activists, The Queer Arab Glossary is a first-of-its-kind survey of the linguistic landscape surrounding queerness in the Arab world. 

It brings together more than 300 words and terms used to refer to queer people across the spoken Arabic dialects, ranging from the humorous to the harrowing, serious to tongue-in-cheek, pejorative to endearing.

Featuring anecdotes and fascinating historical facts, the bilingual glossary paints a linguistic picture of how queer bodies are perceived within the Arab region. 

It includes insightful essays by eight leading Arab queer artists, academics, activists and writers, which situate the glossary in a modern social and political context.

With beautiful, witty illustrations by Haitham Haddad, The Queer Arab Glossary is a powerful response to myths about queer people in the Arab world. It is proof that the LGBTQI+ Arab community is alive and thriving. 

He’s back! This time the Man Without a Plan lands in Belize, quickly amassing an array of new friends in a short time – some of whom can even match his penchant for being in a near-constant buzz from industrial-quantity drugs and drink.

As ever, the characters Steven ingratiates himself with become his surrogate dysfunctional family. But Tracey, Devonais, Ask Bobby!, Valentino and a pack of feral kids soon have Steven suspecting that his cheerfully transactional relationships are, in fact, ensnaring him in a web of scams. Will he be left for broke, stranded in this shabby paradise? Is his paranoia justifiable, or simply the result of continuous cocaine use? His response is to embark all together on a road trip along the coast, taking in shantytowns, fine hotels, beaches and, at a low ebb, jail.

Coarse, irresponsible and wilfully uninformed, Froelich is nevertheless observant and caring at heart – and Belize is about the ways in which chaotic, complex human beings find community, no matter where they’re from or where they’re headed.

What was an Indian prince doing in the retinue of a French envoy at Constantinople in 1796?

When Sultan Selim III, struck by the sight of a fellow Muslim in a French cortège, asked how he got there, he was told the traveller’s extraordinary story. It had begun in 1772 with the annexation by the East India Company of Broach, a coastal town in Gujarat. Twenty years later, four sons of the town’s deposed nawab headed towards London to seek redress. One of them, Ahmad Khan, reached Paris during the Reign of Terror and told his story to the new Revolutionary regime. Yet, although his tale was true, he was not the man he claimed to be.

Uncovering the elusive paper trail of a group of travellers across early colonial India, the Ottoman Empire and Revolutionary France, Rahul Markovits pieces together an astonishing range of fragments from a vast multilingual archive to illuminate in vivid detail how navigating regimes of protection and assistance was key to their securing a passage to Europe. The petitions the travellers submitted along the way and the stories of travails they contained were instrumental in fuelling their journey. They are also recognisably counter-narratives to dominant Eurocentric accounts of the Age of Revolutions.

Taking readers backstage to challenge them into thinking how these stories can be turned into history, A Passage to Europe – looking at the material world of travellers, “passing” strategies, identification, translation and mistranslation, and the global micro-politics of mobility more generally – represents a brilliant and immensely readable contribution to connected histories.

Deftly moving between Algeria and Paris, bestselling novelist Faïza Guène's Discretion compellingly evokes the realities of a first- and second-generation family as they carve out a future for themselves in France, finding one another as they go along.   

Yamina Taleb is approaching her seventieth birthday. These days, she strives for a quiet life, grateful to the country that hosts her and her adored family. The closest she gets to drama is scooping ‘revolutionary’ bargains in the form of plastic kitchenware gadgets. 

But Yamina’s children feel differently. They don’t always fit in in Paris, and it hurts. Omar wonders whether it’s too late to change course as he watches the world pass him by from the driver’s seat of his Uber. His sisters are tired of having to prove themselves, and their allegiance, to a place that is at once home, and not. When the whole family goes away on holiday – not to the motherland, but to a villa-with-pool rental near the Atlantic coast – the Talebs come to realise just how family defines our sense of belonging.  

Alternating fragments from Yamina’s Algerian past with those of her Paris present, Discretion spans the history of colonial conflict from the Second World War to the present day. A tribute to mothers everywhere, it is also the story of a modern French family feeling their way through the puzzle of their history – and finding one another as they go along.      

‘Nobody knows how much I owe that man’, Primo Levi said of the bricklayer who saved his life at Auschwitz. ‘I could never repay him.’ Levi was referring to Lorenzo Perrone, who – at great personal risk – smuggled food, letters and clothing to Levi and other prisoners. The soup might contain sparrows’ wings, prune stones, or even fragments of pulped newspaper, but it provided Levi with the 500 extra calories he needed to survive each day. Perrone said nothing as he left the mess tin by a half-constructed brick wall.

In A Man of Few Words, Carlo Greppi pieces together Levi’s saviour, a near-destitute labourer with minimal formal education. Despite their stark differences, Levi and Perrone’s friendship survived the Holocaust and continued until Perrone’s tragic death. Levi never forgot Perrone. As his friend withdrew from the world, Levi tried persistently to preserve the memory of this man of few words who had saved his life, but who left few traces of his own behind.

Compassionate, worldly and prescient, Greppi brings to light a universal story about an individual who kept hope alive in one of the darkest times and places known to man.

‘We are the flowers in the garden of the heavens; we are mezze and wine at God’s gathering.’ Rumi

A dervish’s training begins in the kitchen. The preparation and festive consumption of food is intrinsically connected to the spiritual practice of Sufism.

Sufi Cuisine offers a sumptuous assortment of dishes inspired by the teachings of the thirteenth century Sufi mystic Rumi, alongside selections of his sayings and parables. Lavishly illustrated, it brings together more than one hundred easy to follow recipes – from chickpea soup and lamb served with plums and sweet spinach, to desserts including candied rose petals and almond halvah, followed by Turkish coffee.

This delightful cookbook provides a unique window into a rich cultural history. It is the ideal introduction to the transformative art of Sufi cooking – restorative for the stomach, spirit and soul.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab world has undergone a series of radical transformations. One of the most significant is the resurgence of activist and puritanical forms of religion presenting as viable alternatives to existing social, cultural and political practices. The rise in sectarianism and violence in the name of religion has left scholars searching for adequate conceptual tools that might generate a clearer insight into these interconnected conflicts.

In Striking from the Margins, leading authorities in their field propose new analytical frameworks to facilitate greater understanding of the fragmentation and devolution of the state in the Arab world. Challenging the revival of well-worn theories in cultural and post-colonial studies, they provide novel contributions on issues ranging from military formations, political violence in urban and rural settings, transregional war economies, the crystallisation of sect based authorities and the restructuring of tribal networks.

Conflict does more than destroy physical spaces. It extinguishes lives, erases histories and disrupts the collective memory of entire communities. In Gaza, where genocide has wrought catastrophic loss, the destruction of heritage adds another dimension of devastation. Yet amid the rubble, acts of archiving, art-making and storytelling persist.

Archiving Gaza in the Present brings together voices from Palestine and beyond to document the cultural erasure and to explore how creative and archival practices resist it. Contributions from curators, architects, artists, journalists, lawyers and scholars capture Gaza’s once-vibrant cultural life – historic buildings, art centres, universities and museums that existed before October 2023 – now turned to rubble.

Featuring rich visual material – from fragmented WhatsApp testimonies to forensic documentation – and including artworks, maps and photographs, Archiving Gaza in the Present is both a living archive and a call to action. It is a vital resource for understanding Gaza’s cultural survival amid destruction.

In partnership with the Arab British Centre.

‘A city so rich in trees it looks like a cloth of brocade spread out upon the land.’

Shamsaddin al-Dimashqi, geographer (1256–1327)

This was Gaza. A place of humanity and creativity, rich in culture and industry. A place now pulverised and devastated, its entire population displaced by a seemingly endless onslaught. 

Today, as its heritage is being destroyed, Gaza’s survivors preserve their culture through literature, music, stories and memories. Daybreak in Gaza is a record of that heritage, revealing an extraordinary place and people. Vignettes of artists, acrobats, doctors, students, shopkeepers and teachers across the generations offer stories of love, life, loss and survival. They display the wealth of Gaza’s cultural landscape and the breadth of its history.

This remarkable book humanises the people dismissed as mere statistics and portrays lives full of joy and meaning. Daybreak in Gaza stands as a mark of resistance to the destruction, and as a testament to the people of Gaza.

Whoever said nature is still has not borne witness to the migration of the seasons.

In this lyrical enquiry, Dalia Al-Dujaili considers what it means to belong in your land. She traces the rich heritage of the earth beneath our feet and the wildlife that call it home – from the oak tree and date palm to fairytale creatures, such as dragons, unicorns and the ancient Lamassu. Weaving together Arab and Islamic mythology with the English and Christian pastoral, Al-Dujaili unmasks the communal lush, familiar and, at times, dark places we share.

A love song to Britain, Iraq and the body of earth we hold in common, Babylon, Albion is a compelling re-imagining of what it means to be native.

Egyptian cities and villages abound with an enormous wealth of khatt, or calligraphic script, ranging from casual scrawls and scribbles to elaborately-painted colourful murals. These historical and contemporary versions of urban lettering , varying in surface, medium and technique, adorn mosques, shop-fronts, houses, trucks, boats, schools, tuk tuks and walls. They are records of human existence, documenting expressions of hope, fears, dreams and anxieties.

Featuring beautiful, unique examples of these written expressions, Khatt is an extensive visual documentation of the found typography and calligraphy in Egypt, a calligraphy hub that possesses a rich tradition of education and production in the field. This timely volume records the traditional craftsmanship of hand-painted calligraphy, in decline because of the digitisation of the Arabic script.

Basma Hamdy is a research-based designer, author and educator. Currently Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, Hamdy earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her publications include Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution.

Noha Zayed is a photographer currently based in Cairo, Egypt. Zayed has exhibited in festivals across the Middle East. Her other creative endeavors include film and music projects such as a documentary on travel and education aired on Al Jazeera in 2017.

Ziya Bey has six months left to live. From his mansion on Farewell Fountain Street, the Ottoman aristocrat plans to tie up some questionable business affairs and say goodbye to the people he cherishes. He hires Artvin, a disillusioned professor with a troubled past, to assist him. Intrigued by his employer’s mysterious household, Artvin spends the days uncovering Ziya Bey’s turbulent life story.

The two men become bound together as they reveal dark elements from their pasts. But when Ziya Bey releases Artvin from his duties sooner than expected, Artvin inherits a spiral of violence he cannot control.

In this gripping ride through the streets of Istanbul, two men learn one another’s secrets. But can either of them learn to live with themselves?

The Arab uprisings of the early 2010s raised hopes for the development of more democratic structures and better living conditions for millions in the region. Instead, they were followed by authoritarian backlash, civil wars, economic collapse and food and energy insecurity. Young people are often the ones hit hardest by the conjunction of these problems. How do they cope with insecurities and growing uncertainties, and what drives them to pursue their own dreams in spite of being disenfranchised?

The Dispossessed Generation is the most comprehensive, in-depth study of young people in the MENA region to date, providing invaluable insights into their self-perceptions and life chances. In this volume, an interdisciplinary team of researchers assess a survey of 12,000 sixteen- to thirty-year-olds from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. They illuminate the extent to which young people engage with their societies and mine new opportunities from a multiplicity of crises.

Deftly moving between Algeria and Paris, bestselling novelist Faïza Guène's Discretion compellingly evokes the realities of a first- and second-generation family as they carve out a future for themselves in France, finding one another as they go along.   

Yamina Taleb is approaching her seventieth birthday. These days, she strives for a quiet life, grateful to the country that hosts her and her adored family. The closest she gets to drama is scooping ‘revolutionary’ bargains in the form of plastic kitchenware gadgets. 

But Yamina’s children feel differently. They don’t always fit in in Paris, and it hurts. Omar wonders whether it’s too late to change course as he watches the world pass him by from the driver’s seat of his Uber. His sisters are tired of having to prove themselves, and their allegiance, to a place that is at once home, and not. When the whole family goes away on holiday – not to the motherland, but to a villa-with-pool rental near the Atlantic coast – the Talebs come to realise just how family defines our sense of belonging.  

Alternating fragments from Yamina’s Algerian past with those of her Paris present, Discretion spans the history of colonial conflict from the Second World War to the present day. A tribute to mothers everywhere, it is also the story of a modern French family feeling their way through the puzzle of their history – and finding one another as they go along.      

In Arab culture, tradition often dictates an individual’s role in a family, with personal desires subsumed in favour of unity. So, what happens when Queer Arabs challenge and re-imagine these expectations?

This Queer Arab Family celebrates the beauty of chosen kin and the everyday acts of care and survival that bind Queer Arabs to each other. Here, ten LGBTQ+ writers from across the Arab world and diaspora redefine what family looks like. From raising children with mum and mum, to becoming an OnlyFans star and building a non-binary belly dancing robot, these writers illuminate, through their own lived experiences, how queer joy and community can be found in the most unexpected places.

Fierce, vibrant and unapologetic, This Queer Arab Family honours the spirit of those who, despite challenges, build community and family on their own terms.

A young girl, renamed Amerika in honour of the US role in the liberation of Kuwait, finds her name has become a barometer of her country’s growing hostility towards the West. A self-conscious Palestinian teenager is drawn into a botched suicide bombing by two belligerent classmates. A middle-aged man dying from cancer looks back on his extramarital affairs and the abiding forgiveness of his wife. A Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after being held captive in Iraq for a decade.

The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you will see life in the Middle East as it is really lived – adolescent love, the fragility of marriage, pain of the most quotidian kind. Mai Al-Nakib’s luminous stories unveil the lives of ordinary people – and the power of objects to hold extraordinary memories.

Arabic erotic literature has a long and rich history going back as far as the ninth century. Far from being the pursuit of prurient pornographers, eroticism and sexuality received considerable attention from scholars.

Written by leading thirteenth-century scientist Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, The Sultan’s Sex Potions is part of a group of works devoted to aphrodisiacs as well as sexual practices and positions. Sober and measured in tone, the treatise was intended as a manual for self-healing. It was composed at the request of the ruler and so its potions, electuaries, syrups and enemas enjoyed a ‘royal warrant of appointment’ to arouse the lust for coitus and enhance sexual potency.

This volume includes a critical edition of three Arabic manuscripts (Berlin, Cairo and Glasgow), accompanied by an English translation as well as an introduction to Arabic erotic literature, a biography of the author, a bibliography of erotological works and extensive indexes.

WINNER OF THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2021

WINNER OF THE POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2022

The female body is a political space.

C+nto enters the private lives of women from the butch counterculture, telling the inside story of the protests they led in the ‘90s to reclaim their bodies as their own – their difficult balance between survival and self-expression. History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through Joelle Taylor’s cantos to uncover these underground communities forged by women.

Part-memoir and part-conjecture, Taylor explores sexuality and gender in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate. C+nto is a love poem, a riot, a late night, and an honouring.

Arab women poets have been around since the earliest of times, yet their diwans (collected poems) were kept in the shadows.

Spanning more than 5000 years, from the pre-Islamic to the Andalusian periods, Classical Poems by Arab Women presents rarely seen work by over sixty women writers who boldly refused to be silenced. From  sorrowful eulogies  to gleeful scorn, this collection offers a rich excursion into the vibrant, exclusively female worlds of pleasure, passion and pain, suppressed for centuries by religious and political bigotry.

With poems in both English and Arabic, this bespoke gift edition celebrates feminine wit and desire, and pays homage to the significant contribution women have made to Arabic literary tradition.

Lebanon: The Cookbook celebrates Lebanese cuisine at its best: fresh, light and generous. Liza and Ziad Asseily reveal the richness of their culture and art de vivre by following a typical Beiruti day in 75 recipes. From breakfast, lunch and aperitifs, through to festive meals and street food enjoyed at night, this cookbook offers a full gastronomic experience.

Among mouth-watering additions such as pomegranate molasses and tahini to kibbeh, mouttabal and spicy stews you’ll also find gluten-free and vegetarian variations of authentic favourites. Traditional dishes are revisited with new ingredients and refined flavours, delivering well-loved classics with a modern twist.

With recommendations and anecdotes about the history of Lebanese cuisine guiding you through Lebanon’s best kept secrets, take an enchanting trip to Beirut and make memories to last forever from the comfort of your own home.

A radical exploration of the power and public (mis)representation of women’s bodies, from ancient mysteries to the present day.

Wild and strange stories have been told about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first creation figure, Mother Earth, fell out of popular cultural history and Christianity introduced the birth of woman, Eve, from a crooked rib. Ranging from the empowering to the absurd, ancient tales about the female figure and gendered body parts have not only survived the twenty-first century but continue to influence modern discourse.

The Shrinking Goddess brings together these myths about the female form and traces subsequent male efforts to ‘tame’ it. Mineke Schipper examines how women’s bodies have been represented since records began – the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE – and around the world, from the so-called island of menstruating men in Papua New Guinea to the Japanese supermarkets and European festivals where ‘breast puddings’ are still considered delicacies. Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power.

The Shrinking Goddess  will appeal to readers of Mary Beard, Angela Davis, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Audre Lorde and Marina Warner

This ground-breaking anthology features the compelling and courageous memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers – some internationally bestselling, others using pseudonyms. Here, we find heart-warming connections and moments of celebration alongside essays exploring the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab.

From a military base in the Gulf to loving whispers caught between the bedsheets; and from touring overseas as a drag queen to a concert in Cairo where the rainbow flag was raised to a crowd of thousands, this collection celebrates the true colours of a vibrant Arab queer experience.

Diary of a Country Prosecutor is an Egyptian comedy of errors. Partly autobiographical, it is written as the journal of a young public prosecutor posted to a village in rural Egypt. Imbued with the ideals of a European education, he encounters a world of poverty and backwardness where an imported legal system is both alien and incomprehensible.

The history of an Indian royal family’s fall from power in the age of the British Empire.

The Nawab Nazim was born into one of India’s most powerful royal families, whose kingdom was three times the size of Great Britain. However, seen as a threat by the British authorities, he was forced to abdicate in 1880, his titles permanently abolished. The Nawab’s change in fortune marked the end of an era in India.

The Last Prince of Bengal tells the true story of the Nawab and his family as they sought by turns to befriend, settle in and eventually escape Britain. From glamourous receptions with Queen Victoria to a scandalous marriage with an English chambermaid; and from Bengal tiger hunts to sheep farming in the harsh Australian outback, Lyn Innes recounts her ancestors’ extraordinary journey from royalty to relative anonymity.

Visiting the extremes of British rule in the age of empire, this is the compelling and intimate story of one family and their place in the defining moments of recent Indian, British and Australian history.

Rise celebrates the uplifting and inspiring stories of 100 remarkable women of colour. From the entrepreneur with a homemade marmalade business who went on to found Women World Banking, to the educator who built the first university in the world; and from the athlete who fled civil war on a sinking boat and then swam in the Olympics, to the first Black female astronaut, these trailblazers have risen above challenges to reach dizzying heights.

These scientists, entertainers, sportswomen, leaders, artists and activists hail from more than 40 countries. Past and present, famous and forgotten, they have worked both behind the scenes and under public scrutiny to make our world a better place.

Featuring stunning portrait illustrations by acclaimed artist Maliha Abidi, Rise reveals the creativity, resilience and bravery of these pioneers; essential reading for all.

Inspired by ancient classical poets, master calligrapher Hassan Massoudy has responded to these timeless poems from around the world, with his signature broad strokes and vibrant colours. In seventy poems and calligraphies, he captures the words and wisdom of our greatest poets, from Al Mutanabbi, Rumi and Khalil Gibran, to Socrates, Shakespeare and Jacques Prévert. From evocations of the immensity of the desert to soulful expressions of unrequited love, Massoudy pays homage to the depth of poetry through visual expression.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, The Poet and the Calligrapher brings new life to old words. The perfect gift and journey for poets, art lovers and dreamers alike.

Winner of Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2021

The Arabic culinary tradition burst onto the scene in the middle of the tenth century, when al-Warraq compiled a culinary treatise titled al-Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes), containing over 600 recipes. However, it would take another three centuries for cookery books to be produced in the European continent. For centuries to come, gastronomic writing would remain the sole preserve of the Arab-Muslim world, with cooking manuals and recipe books being produced from Baghdad, Aleppo and Egypt in the East, to Muslim Spain, Morocco and Tunisia in the West. A total of nine complete cookery books have survived from this time, containing a total of nearly four thousand recipes.

The Sultan's Feast by the Egyptian Ibn Mubarak Shah in the fifteenth century is one such book. Reflecting the importance of gastronomy in Arab culture, this culinary treatise features more than 330 recipes - from bread-making and omelettes, to sweets, pickling and aromatics - and tips on a range of topics, from essentials a cook should know to how to distil drinkable water.

Available in English for the first time, this critical bilingual volume offers a sophisticated insight into the world of medieval Arabic gastronomic writing.

The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In this new approach, Idries Trevathan examines the language of colour in Islamic art and architecture in dialogue with its aesthetic contexts, offering insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of interpreting colour.

The seventeenth-century Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. Here, Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the mosque’s backdrop. He shows how careful combinations of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns express knowledge beyond that experienced in the corporeal world, offering another language with which to know and experience God. Colour thus becomes a spiritual language, calling for a re-consideration of how we read Islamic aesthetics.

A twelve-year old boy returns to his village from school in Cairo to find the community torn by feud and fear. A corrupt official has decreed the fields must be irrigated in five days, instead of the customary ten – a demand that threatens to disrupt the economy and life of the whole village. But rebellion is contrary to their traditional attitude of servility and easy-going natures. It takes many attempts – some disastrous, others comical and touching – before they can organise anything like an effective resistance. Working together, the young and old men and women in the village discover that if you are faithful to the land, it will care for you.

 Egyptian Earth was first published in 1954, when almost one million Egyptians besieged President Nasser in Abdin Palace, protesting the military dictatorship and demanding land reforms. An epic drama of great power, this compassionate and humorous tale of defiance is a masterpiece of modern Arabic literature.

Finalist the People’s Book Prize 

Cyprus’ capital Nicosia has been split by a militarised border for decades. In this collection, writers from all sides of the divide reimagine the past, present and future of their city.

Here, Cypriot-Greeks coexist alongside Cypriot-Turks, the north with the south, town with countryside, dominant voices with the marginalised. This is a city of endless possibilities – a place where an anthropologist from London and a talkative Marxist are hunted by a gunman in the Forbidden zone; where a romance between two aspiring Tango dancers falls victim to Nicosia’s time difference; and where an artist finds his workplace on a rooftop, where he paints a horizon disturbed only by birds.

Together, these writers journey beyond the beaten track creating a complete picture of Nicosia, the world’s last divided capital city, that defies barriers of all kinds.

'Fierce, captivating, revolutionary. A dazzling collection that will win hearts and change minds.' --Elif Shafak

It is a little-known secret that Arabic literature has a long tradition of erotic writing. Behind that secret lies another – that many of the writers are women.

We Wrote in Symbols celebrates the works of 75 of these female writers of Arab heritage who articulate love and lust with artistry and skill. Here, a wedding night takes an unexpected turn beneath a canopy of stars; a woman on the run meets her match in a flirtatious encounter at Dubai Airport; and a carnal awakening occurs in a Palestinian refugee camp. From a masked rendezvous in a circus, to meetings in underground bars and unmade beds, there is no such thing as a typical sexual encounter, as this electrifying anthology shows.

Powerfully conveying the complexities and intrigues of desire, We Wrote in Symbols invites you to share these characters’ wildest fantasies and most intimate moments.