The American University in Cairo Press

A TOP 100 LITERARY WORK OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (THE ARAB WRITERS UNION)
RUNNER-UP TO THE WINNER OF THE 2025 SAIF GHOBASH BANIPAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC LITERARY TRANSLATION
A BOOK RIOT BEST BOOK OF 2024

“A magnum opus of prose fiction”—Marina Warner, author of Once Upon a Time

A multigenerational epic set at the collapse of Muslim rule in Medieval Spain, available now for the first time in a new, complete translation

It is 1492, and the keys to Granada, the last Muslim state in the Spanish Peninsula, have been handed over to the Christian king and queen: the final vestiges of this Arab kingdom in Europe are swept away.

As the triumphant new masters of Granada burn books, Abu Jaafar, a bookseller by trade, quietly moves his rich library out of town, while preparing for the marriage of his granddaughter Saleema to his apprentice Saad. The tangled lives of Abu Jaafar’s family, his descendants, and his community bear witness to the vanquishing of Muslim life: confiscations, forced conversions, and expulsions.

Radwa Ashour’s sweeping trilogy, set over one hundred years against the backdrop of the great historical events of sixteenth-century Europe, tells the story of those who remained in Andalusia, of the individuals who struggled to maintain faith and hope in a possible future. It narrates a community’s effort to comprehend what has happened to them, of their valiant but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to resist the destruction of their identity.

Named a top literary work of the twentieth century by the Arab Writers’ Union, Granada is now available in English in its entirety for the first time. All three novels—Granada, Maryama and The Departure—are brilliantly retranslated in this outstanding new paperback edition.

WINNER OF THE 2024 SHARJAH AWARD FOR THE BEST INTERNATIONAL FICTION
NAMED ONE OF '51 FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023' (WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS)
LONGLISTED FOR THE BRIDPORT NOVEL AWARD

“A stirring novel about a family.”—World Literature Today

An intergenerational drama rendered in beautiful prose featuring the struggles of a mother and daughter to navigate as outsiders in Baghdad and London

“Who would be charmed by tales of life in the beautiful old house on the banks of the Tigris—looted now no doubt, its shutters torn and the courtyard strewn with mattresses?”

One night in 2003, Anglo-Iraqi psychiatrist Mona Haddad has a surprise visitor to her London office, an old acquaintance Duncan Claybourne. But why has he come? Will his confession finally lay bare what happened to her family before they escaped Iraq?

Their stories begin in 1937, when Mona’s mother Diane, a lively Englishwoman newly married to Ibrahim, an ambitious Iraqi doctor, meets Duncan by chance. Diane is working as a nanny for the Iraqi royal family. Duncan is a young British Embassy officer in Baghdad. When the king dies in a mysterious accident, Ibrahim and his family suspect Diane of colluding with Duncan and the British.

Summoning up the vanished world of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, Elizabeth Loudon’s richly evocative story of one family calls into question British attitudes and policies in Iraq and offers up a penetrating reflection on cross-cultural marriage and the lives of women caught between different worlds.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

"This is an absolutely superb book."—The Modern Novel

A magical story of a Crusade-era bookseller who embarks on a journey through the Islamic world’s great medieval cities

In the epic fashion of the great Arab explorers and travel writers of the Middle Ages, scribe and bookworm Mazid al-Hanafi narrates this journey from his remote village in the Arabian Desert. Dreaming of grand libraries, his passion for the written word draws him into a secret society of book smugglers and into the famed cultural capitals of the period—Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Granada, and Cordoba.

He discovers a dangerous new world of ideas and experiences the cultural diversity of the Islamic Golden Age, its sects, philosophical schools, wars, and ways of life.

Omaima Al-Khamis’s magical storytelling and her vivid descriptions of time and place trace a route through ancient cities and cultures and immerse us in a distant era, uncovering the intellectual debates and struggles which continue to rage today.

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

"Few writers possess Fatma's boldness”—The New Arab

An urgent and raw confessional of memory and family and all that is lost and won in one woman's lifetime

The discovery of an old tin of chocolates, its contents long ago devoured, marks the entry into this intimate story that reaches back through a lifetime of memories in search of self and home, with the relationship between mother and daughter at its core. 

Fatma Qandil describes, in startling and immersive prose, growing up in a middle-class Egyptian family, the youngest child and witness to their declining fortunes. Spanning the 1960s to the present day, her happy childhood melts away to reveal the fecklessness of her selfish older brothers, her father’s addiction, her mother’s illness, and the violence and many deaths, both literal and figurative, that she endures.

In both celebration and suffering, and through triumph and disappointment, her voice is unflinching, revealing both a determination to speak the truth and a poetic sensitivity that is disarming. Recipient of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, this fictional debut marks the arrival of a stunning new voice.

FINALIST FOR THE NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD
BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY: AN AMAZON EDITORS' PICK

A stunning debut novel and an impressive feat of storytelling that pulls together mythology, magic, and ancient legend in the gripping story of a mother's struggle to save her only daughter

Nadine is a jinn tasked with one job: telling the stories of the dead. She rises every morning to gather pomegranate seeds—the souls of the dead—that have fallen during the night. With her daughter Layala at her side, she eats the seeds and tells their stories. Only then can the departed pass through the final gate of death.

But when the seeds stop falling, Nadine knows something is terribly wrong. All her worst fears are confirmed when she is visited by Kamuna, Death herself and ruler of the underworld, who reveals her desire for someone to replace her: it is Layala she wants.

Nadine will do whatever it takes to keep her daughter safe, but Kamuna has little patience and a ruthless drive to get what she has come for. Layala’s fate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance.

Rooted in Middle Eastern mythology, Rania Hanna deftly weaves subtle, yet breathtaking, magic through this vivid and compelling story that has at its heart the universal human desire to, somehow, outmaneuver death.

A story of betrayal, desire, and family drama, written by a giant of Egyptian popular fiction who shocked readers in the 1950s when this Lolita-esque novel first appeared and whose work has never before been available in English

Sixteen-year-old Nadia had been raised by her father, after her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Indulged and petulant, she remained the only female in her father’s life. But when she returns from boarding school to find that he has remarried without her knowledge, she conspires to restore her rightful place, creating misery, confusion, and a flood of unexpected consequences in her wake.

Written as a letter, a confession, by now twenty-one-year old Nadia, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s classic novel of revenge and betrayal challenges patriarchal norms with its strong female characters and brazen sexuality, and continues to speak to the complex human condition. It dives into middle-class life, and lays bare the repressed desires, seething jealousies, and complicated dramas of family.

Abdel Kouddous’s masterpiece I Do Not Sleep was adapted into a classic of Egyptian cinema in 1957, and its publication for the first time in English is an international publishing event.

A rich, sweeping novel of Palestine with the Nakba at its heart, by an acclaimed author

Ruqayya was only thirteen when the Nakba came to her village in Palestine in 1948. The massacre in Tantoura drove her from her home and from everything she had ever known. She had not left her village before, but she would never return. Now an old woman, Ruqayya looks back on a long life in exile, one that has taken her to Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and given her children and grandchildren. Through her depth of experience and her indomitable spirit, we live her love of her land, her family, and her people, and we feel the repeated pain of loss and of diaspora.

“Imagine Cormac McCarthy's savage lyricism in a Paul Bowles desert landscape and you begin to enter the bleakly beautiful world of this mesmerizing, fable-like novel.”—The Independent

Gold Dust is a classic story of the brotherhood between man and beast, the thread of companionship that is all the difference between life and death in the desert. It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of limitless and waterless wastes, and a parable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society.

Rejected by his tribe and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Libyan Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. There, he says farewell to the mount who has been his companion through thirst, disease, lust, and loneliness. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of jinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold.

An enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this compelling novel combining elements of magical realism with political history

Can one man or a mere ring alter the events of one’s life and the history of a country? Combining elements of magical realism with momentous history, Suleiman’s Ring poses these questions and more in a gripping tale of friendship, identity, and the fate of a nation.

Alexandria, Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 Free Officers revolution. Dawud, a struggling musician, is summoned with his best friend Sheikh Hassanein to a meeting with Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seeks their help as he mobilizes for the revolution. Dawud lends Nasser an enchanted silver ring for its powers to bring good luck. The revolution succeeds but Dawud soon grows estranged from Hassanein, who has joined the Muslim Brotherhood, after he suggests that Dawud leave Egypt since as a Jew he is no longer welcome. When Hassanein is arrested, however, destiny draws Dawud into a complex web of sexual intrigue and betrayal that threatens to upend his already precarious existence.

Set against the backdrop of the simmering political tensions of mid-twentieth-century Egypt and the Arab–Israeli wars, Sherif Meleka’s story of fate and fortune transports us to another time and place while peeling back the curtain on events that still haunt the country to this day.

ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW YORK TIMES ISTANBUL READING LIST
RUNCIMAN AWARD SHORTLIST
ERIC HOFFER AWARD FINALIST & HONORABLE MENTION
DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLIST
WNBA GREAT GROUP READ SELECTION

At the neighborhood café where pastry chef Kosmas, charming widower Fanis, and other Rum—Greek Orthodox Christian—friends meet regularly for afternoon tea, American-born Daphne arrives with her elderly aunt. Daphne unsettles hearts, provokes jealousies, and stirs up memories of the 1955 Istanbul pogrom, forcing Kosmas and Fanis to confront their painful history in order to risk new beginnings. A shrewd and humorous tale, A Recipe for Daphne invites the reader into the kitchens, loves, and secret lives of Istanbul's most ancient community.

Available in English for the first time, this rediscovered classic which Naguib Mahfouz called “exceptional," tells a story of fathers and sons, scoundrels and the innocent, set in 1930s Cairo

Khaled, the spoiled idle son of a pasha, meets Mallim, carpenter’s apprentice and son of a scoundrel, when he comes to fix a broken window. In the course of his work, Mallim stumbles across a stash of money and dutifully hands it in. Khaled cooks up an overly elaborate plot to see that his dastardly father pays Mallim his due, but the plot backfires and Mallim is thrown in jail.
Khaled’s guilt over Mallim’s misfortune, made worse by his ridiculous attempts to defend him, result in a decisive moment: he breaks ties with his cruel and tyrannical father, seeking to leave behind the upper-class lifestyle he finds so suffocating.

They meet again years later, when Mallim has been released from prison and given up on earning an honest living. Khaled gets caught up in Mallim’s latest scam and is drawn into joining his cadre of eccentrics and failed artists living in a derelict Mamluk citadel.

With a sharp satirical voice Adel Kamal’s masterful novel is filled with compelling drama, vivid characters, and subtle humor.

A deeply poetic account of love and resistance through a young girl’s eyes by acclaimed writer, Sahar Khalifeh, called "the Virginia Woolf of Palestinian literature” (Börsenblatt)

Nidal, after many decades of restless exile, returns to her family home in Nablus, where she had lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba that scattered her family across the globe. She was a young girl when the popular resistance began and, through the bloodshed and bitter struggle, Nidal fell in love with freedom fighter Rabie. He was her first and only real love—him and all that he represented: Palestine in its youth, the resistance fighters in the hills, the nation as embodied in her family home and in the land.

Many years later, Nidal and Rabie meet, and he encourages her to read her uncle Amin’s memoirs. She immerses herself in the details of her family and national past and discovers the secret history of her absent mother.

Filled with emotional urgency and political immediacy, Sahar Khalifeh spins an epic tale reaching from the final days of the British Mandate to today with clear-eyed realism and great imagination.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE 202 SAIF GHOBASH BANIPAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC LITERARY TRANSLATION
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)

"This is a deeply human book. . . . a masterwork."–Omar El Akkad, LitHub

A novel of enormous power and great beauty, in which a Palestinian woman raised in a refugee camp learns to sew which helps her to construct a life

Hawwa is a child of the grinding hardship of a Palestinian refugee camp. She has had to survive the camp itself, as well as the humiliation and destruction of an abusive family. But now, in her middle years something most unexpected has happened: she has fallen in love.

Velvet unfolds over a day in Hawwa’s life, as she makes plans for a new beginning. She sifts through her memories: stories of her family, her childhood, and her beloved mentor, Sitt Qamar, who among other gifts, taught her to sew, and most importantly, taught her to value herself.

Velvet is the story of one woman’s resilience, her unyielding sensuality, and the enduring bonds that make living bearable.

The misadventures of a modern time traveler through Egypt’s recent and medieval past

Ibn Shalaby, like many Egyptians, is looking for a job. Yet, unlike most of his fellow citizens, he is prone to sudden dislocations in time. Armed with his trusty briefcase and his Islamic-calendar wristwatch, he bounces uncontrollably through Egypt’s rich and varied past, with occasional return visits to the 1990s.

Through his wild and whimsical adventures, he meets, befriends, and falls out with sultans, poets, and an assortment of celebrities—from Naguib Mahfouz to the founder of the city of Cairo. Khairy Shalaby’s nimble storytelling brings this witty odyssey to life.

Spanning twentieth-century Egyptian history and opening with the true story of a prominent Cairo businessman’s murder, this rags-to-riches story wondrously combines real-life events with fiction, told by a “magical storyteller”

It was in the spring of 1927 that Cairo's attention was captured by the shocking murder of prominent businessman Solomon Cicurel in his Nile-side villa in the upscale Zamalek district. It was a burglary that went wrong, and four culprits were soon arrested. Their trial was concluded swiftly, their punishments were decisive, and society breathed a sigh of relief.

In Ashraf El-Ashmawi's telling, there was a fifth accomplice, Abbas, who fled to his home in the countryside to lay low until the murder trial blew over. However, he did not escape empty-handed and kept stolen documents from Cicurel's villa, ones that he imagined would lead him to a hidden safe. Abbas hatched a plan to return to the capital, find the safe, and make his fortune. The first step was to place his sister Zeinab with Cicurel's widow, Paula.

Abbas’s rags-to-riches story unfolds as a tale of modern Egypt, taking in the Second World War, the 1952 revolution and rise of Nasser, the 1967 war, and the Sadat and Mubarak eras. Spanning the 1920s to the 1990s, El-Ashmawi deftly weaves together history with fiction in this intriguing English-language debut.

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

A Top 100 Literary Work of the Twentieth Century (The Arab Writers Union)

"Absorbing . . . Superbly translated . . . . Arguably the best modern [Egyptian] novel not written by Nobel laureate Mahfouz."—Kirkus Reviews

A landmark in women's writing set during the struggle for Egyptian independence

February 1946: Cairo is engulfed by demonstrations against the British. Layla's older brother Mahmud returns, wounded in the clashes, and the events of that fateful day mark a turning point in her life, an awakening to the world around her.

Latifa al-Zayyat's acclaimed modern classic follows Layla through her sexual and political coming of age. Her rebellious spirit seeks to free itself from the stifling social codes that dictate a young woman's life, just as Egypt struggles to shake off the yoke of imperialist rule.

An enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this compelling novel combining elements of magical realism with political history

Can one man or a mere ring alter the events of one’s life and the history of a country? Combining elements of magical realism with momentous history, Suleiman’s Ring poses these questions and more in a gripping tale of friendship, identity, and the fate of a nation.

Alexandria, Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 Free Officers revolution. Dawud, a struggling musician, is summoned with his best friend Sheikh Hassanein to a meeting with Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seeks their help as he mobilizes for the revolution. Dawud lends Nasser an enchanted silver ring for its powers to bring good luck. The revolution succeeds but Dawud soon grows estranged from Hassanein, who has joined the Muslim Brotherhood, after he suggests that Dawud leave Egypt since as a Jew he is no longer welcome. When Hassanein is arrested, however, destiny draws Dawud into a complex web of sexual intrigue and betrayal that threatens to upend his already precarious existence.

Set against the backdrop of the simmering political tensions of mid-twentieth-century Egypt and the Arab–Israeli wars, Sherif Meleka’s story of fate and fortune transports us to another time and place while peeling back the curtain on events that still haunt the country to this day.

A powerful and poetic masterpiece where ordinary people’s dreams play out in a city plagued by government exploitation and crime

As his wife delivers their child in the next room, a man wakes from the nightmare of a teenage girl’s body lying beneath his bed. In this twilight before birth, Fadel’s epic novel catches us in the confusion between exaltation and despair. The girl, Farah, once dreamed of being a singer in Casablanca, a city standing in the shadow of the tallest minaret in the world.

Illuminating the aspirations of those just struggling to make a living, A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me is a tour-de-force, a novel of power plays and petty jealousies, deceit and corruption, love and loss, written with Fadel’s masterful, narrative control and searing, historical insight.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

Spring, 1990. After years of searching in vain, a stranger passes a scrap of paper to Zina. It’s from Aziz: the man who vanished the day after their wedding almost two decades ago. It propels Zina on a final quest for a secret desert jail in southern Morocco, where her husband crouches in despair, dreaming of his former life.

Youssef Fadel pays powerful testament to a terrible period in Morocco’s history, known as ‘the Years of Cinders and Lead,’ and masterfully evokes the suffering inflicted on those who supported the failed coup against King Hassan II in 1972.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE KATARA PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

A stunning and luminous novel of modern Lebanon, a deeply human portrayal of men and women longing for change

“In gripping, absorbing, and profound tones, City of the Silenced makes a powerful, complex statement about the cost of politics for the ordinary Arab citizen today.”—Youssef Rakha, author of The Dissenters

In Lebanon’s coastal city of Tyre, Sultan was raised by the sea, under the shade of ficus trees. But it is not an idyllic life. He lives in the cemetery, born into a family who hold the unique profession of announcing a person’s death through a loudspeaker around town. Sultan longs to escape the dark shadow cast by this existence, longs not to follow in his father’s footsteps, but finds himself trapped between the cemetery and the sea.

Sultan is not alone in his desire for escape: His best friend loads his family onto a small boat and takes the treacherous journey to Europe; another friend joins an armed militia. Meanwhile, Sultan begins an ill-fated romance with an upper-class girl he meets at a book club, and she encourages him to emigrate to Canada.

Through Sultan and those closest to him, Mohammed Tarazi traces the collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating Beirut Port explosion, and the crushing weight of decay and corruption on those seeking simply to live ordinary lives. Achingly painful and beautifully crafted, City of the Silenced cuts into the most basic human need to survive: to find hope and reach for a better future.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE KATARA PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

A stunning and luminous novel of modern Lebanon, a deeply human portrayal of men and women longing for change

“In gripping, absorbing, and profound tones, City of the Silenced makes a powerful, complex statement about the cost of politics for the ordinary Arab citizen today.”—Youssef Rakha, author of The Dissenters

In Lebanon’s coastal city of Tyre, Sultan was raised by the sea, under the shade of ficus trees. But it is not an idyllic life. He lives in the cemetery, born into a family who hold the unique profession of announcing a person’s death through a loudspeaker around town. Sultan longs to escape the dark shadow cast by this existence, longs not to follow in his father’s footsteps, but finds himself trapped between the cemetery and the sea.

Sultan is not alone in his desire for escape: His best friend loads his family onto a small boat and takes the treacherous journey to Europe; another friend joins an armed militia. Meanwhile, Sultan begins an ill-fated romance with an upper-class girl he meets at a book club, and she encourages him to emigrate to Canada.

Through Sultan and those closest to him, Mohammed Tarazi traces the collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating Beirut Port explosion, and the crushing weight of decay and corruption on those seeking simply to live ordinary lives. Achingly painful and beautifully crafted, City of the Silenced cuts into the most basic human need to survive: to find hope and reach for a better future.

This highly original novel tells an alternative history in which the Arab Spring leads Egypt and the Middle East to the brink of nuclear war

“[A] wonderful ‘prophetic’ novel”—Jamal Khashoggi

In what might be his last night on Earth, the Egyptian president’s translator Ali pens a letter to his estranged son, telling him of everything that has led him, and his country, to breaking point.

Ali is traveling aboard a cargo ship on a dangerous mission to accompany twenty-four nuclear warheads from North Korea to Egypt, where they will be launched at the Israeli occupation of Sinai. But he has blown the whistle on the operation and now must face the consequences: will he be celebrated as a hero or condemned as a traitor?

Fishere’s powerful storytelling offers an alternative history to events post-revolution in Egypt, hinging on the rupture of the Arab Spring. Exit creates a compelling, and terrifying, vision of the Middle East, one that both teaches us about the present and warns of coming catastrophe.

A cult classic in modern Arab literature, filled with black humor and satire, reissued in a new edition

“What this inventive and mad novel portrays is the split within Egyptian society, torn between religiosity and liberation.”—Robert Solé, Le Monde

"What is madness?” asks the narrator of Ahmed Alaidy’s jittery, funny, and angry novel. Assuring readers that they are about to find out, the narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo—in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads, navigating the city’s pinball machine of social life with tolerable efficiency.

But lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters like his elusive psychiatrist uncle with a disturbing interest in phobias. And then there’s Abbas, the narrator’s best friend who surfaces at critical moments to drive our hero into uncontrollably multiplying difficulties. For instance, there’s the ticklish situation with the simultaneous blind-dates Abbas has set up for him on different levels of a coffee-shop in a Cairo mall with two girls both called Hind. With friends like Abbas, what paranoiac needs enemies?

This highly original novel tells an alternative history in which the Arab Spring leads Egypt and the Middle East to the brink of nuclear war

“[A] wonderful ‘prophetic’ novel”—Jamal Khashoggi

In what might be his last night on Earth, the Egyptian president’s translator Ali pens a letter to his estranged son, telling him of everything that has led him, and his country, to breaking point.

Ali is traveling aboard a cargo ship on a dangerous mission to accompany twenty-four nuclear warheads from North Korea to Egypt, where they will be launched at the Israeli occupation of Sinai. But he has blown the whistle on the operation and now must face the consequences: will he be celebrated as a hero or condemned as a traitor?

Fishere’s powerful storytelling offers an alternative history to events post-revolution in Egypt, hinging on the rupture of the Arab Spring. Exit creates a compelling, and terrifying, vision of the Middle East, one that both teaches us about the present and warns of coming catastrophe.

“The millennial generation’s most celebrated literary achievement.”—Al-Ahram Weekly

“The first glimmer of hope for a true fictional renaissance—an instantly rewarding read embraced by an unprecedented range of literary figures”—The Daily Star

What is madness?” asks the narrator of Ahmed Alaidy’s jittery, funny, and angry novel. Assuring readers that they are about to find out, the narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo—in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads, navigating the city’s pinball machine of social life with tolerable efficiency.
But lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters like his elusive psychiatrist uncle with a disturbing interest in phobias. And then there’s Abbas, the narrator’s best friend who surfaces at critical moments to drive our hero into uncontrollably multiplying difficulties. For instance, there’s the ticklish situation with the simultaneous blind-dates Abbas has set up for him on different levels of a coffee-shop in a Cairo mall with two girls both called Hind. With friends like Abbas, what paranoiac needs enemies?

Finding love, comfort, and hope amid uncertainty, two young, Egyptian women reveal themselves to one another in this dreamlike and award-winning debut

It is during the 2011 Egyptian revolution that Arwa and Mariam meet in a subway station near Cairo University. Arwa has returned from Germany to join the protests, and their chance encounter is to change the course of Mariam’s sheltered existence.

They tell each other the stories of their mothers and grandmothers, the histories that have brought them to this point. Mariam was born in Saudi Arabia, and first set foot in Egypt after both her parents were killed in a car accident. Arwa’s mother also died a tragic, early death, and she, traveling in the opposite direction as Mariam, left Egypt to escape.

This is a mesmerizing and otherworldly debut novel about finding salvation and finding oneself, despite the anguish and traumas of the past. It pivots on the present moment of Arwa's and Mariam’s unexpected union, and at its heart is a recognition of the women who came before them.

Finding love, comfort, and hope amid uncertainty, two young, Egyptian women reveal themselves to one another in this dreamlike and award-winning debut

It is during the 2011 Egyptian revolution that Arwa and Mariam meet in a subway station near Cairo University. Arwa has returned from Germany to join the protests, and their chance encounter is to change the course of Mariam’s sheltered existence.

They tell each other the stories of their mothers and grandmothers, the histories that have brought them to this point. Mariam was born in Saudi Arabia, and first set foot in Egypt after both her parents were killed in a car accident. Arwa’s mother also died a tragic, early death, and she, traveling in the opposite direction as Mariam, left Egypt to escape.

This is a mesmerizing and otherworldly debut novel about finding salvation and finding oneself, despite the anguish and traumas of the past. It pivots on the present moment of Arwa's and Mariam’s unexpected union, and at its heart is a recognition of the women who came before them.

An uproarious journey through Cairo's music scene in the early 2000s, where everything from American rock to Egyptian popular songs cultivate big dreams, winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award

Following a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, “Local,” as he is known to his friends, moves from Alexandria to Cairo. In his new apartment, he discovers an old accordion, while his roommate unexpectedly decides to take up the saxophone, despite never having touched one before. And so, in the blistering summer heat, the two of them, without any formal training, dive into their first musical experiment: they put his mother’s cookbook to music.

Along with an eccentric assortment of acquaintances and occasional bandmates, Local crashes through his twenties and in and out of Cairo hangouts, heated debates on different music scenes, and various impromptu jam sessions and attempts at musical production.

This is a raucous journey through offbeat downtown Cairo in the early 2000s and the music of the era, from Mohamed Mounir to Pink Floyd. Suffused with a sardonic humor and full of hilarious observations, Red Like Orange vividly chronicles life lived just outside the mainstream.

An uproarious journey through Cairo's music scene in the early 2000s, where everything from American rock to Egyptian popular songs cultivate big dreams, winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award

Following a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, “Local,” as he is known to his friends, moves from Alexandria to Cairo. In his new apartment, he discovers an old accordion, while his roommate unexpectedly decides to take up the saxophone, despite never having touched one before. And so, in the blistering summer heat, the two of them, without any formal training, dive into their first musical experiment: they put his mother’s cookbook to music.

Along with an eccentric assortment of acquaintances and occasional bandmates, Local crashes through his twenties and in and out of Cairo hangouts, heated debates on different music scenes, and various impromptu jam sessions and attempts at musical production.

This is a raucous journey through offbeat downtown Cairo in the early 2000s and the music of the era, from Mohamed Mounir to Pink Floyd. Suffused with a sardonic humor and full of hilarious observations, Red Like Orange vividly chronicles life lived just outside the mainstream.

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

"Few writers possess Fatma's boldness”—The New Arab

An urgent and raw confessional of memory and family and all that is lost and won in one woman's lifetime

The discovery of an old tin of chocolates, its contents long ago devoured, marks the entry into this intimate story that reaches back through a lifetime of memories in search of self and home, with the relationship between mother and daughter at its core. 

Fatma Qandil describes, in startling and immersive prose, growing up in a middle-class Egyptian family, the youngest child and witness to their declining fortunes. Spanning the 1960s to the present day, her happy childhood melts away to reveal the fecklessness of her selfish older brothers, her father’s addiction, her mother’s illness, and the violence and many deaths, both literal and figurative, that she endures.

In both celebration and suffering, and through triumph and disappointment, her voice is unflinching, revealing both a determination to speak the truth and a poetic sensitivity that is disarming. Recipient of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, this fictional debut marks the arrival of a stunning new voice.

FINALIST FOR THE NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD
BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY: AN AMAZON EDITORS' PICK

A stunning debut novel and an impressive feat of storytelling that pulls together mythology, magic, and ancient legend in the gripping story of a mother's struggle to save her only daughter

Nadine is a jinn tasked with one job: telling the stories of the dead. She rises every morning to gather pomegranate seeds—the souls of the dead—that have fallen during the night. With her daughter Layala at her side, she eats the seeds and tells their stories. Only then can the departed pass through the final gate of death.

But when the seeds stop falling, Nadine knows something is terribly wrong. All her worst fears are confirmed when she is visited by Kamuna, Death herself and ruler of the underworld, who reveals her desire for someone to replace her: it is Layala she wants.

Nadine will do whatever it takes to keep her daughter safe, but Kamuna has little patience and a ruthless drive to get what she has come for. Layala’s fate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance.

Rooted in Middle Eastern mythology, Rania Hanna deftly weaves subtle, yet breathtaking, magic through this vivid and compelling story that has at its heart the universal human desire to, somehow, outmaneuver death.

WINNER OF THE 2024 SHARJAH AWARD FOR THE BEST INTERNATIONAL FICTION
NAMED ONE OF '51 FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023' (WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS)
LONGLISTED FOR THE BRIDPORT NOVEL AWARD

“A stirring novel about a family.”—World Literature Today

An intergenerational drama rendered in beautiful prose featuring the struggles of a mother and daughter to navigate as outsiders in Baghdad and London

“Who would be charmed by tales of life in the beautiful old house on the banks of the Tigris—looted now no doubt, its shutters torn and the courtyard strewn with mattresses?”

One night in 2003, Anglo-Iraqi psychiatrist Mona Haddad has a surprise visitor to her London office, an old acquaintance Duncan Claybourne. But why has he come? Will his confession finally lay bare what happened to her family before they escaped Iraq?

Their stories begin in 1937, when Mona’s mother Diane, a lively Englishwoman newly married to Ibrahim, an ambitious Iraqi doctor, meets Duncan by chance. Diane is working as a nanny for the Iraqi royal family. Duncan is a young British Embassy officer in Baghdad. When the king dies in a mysterious accident, Ibrahim and his family suspect Diane of colluding with Duncan and the British.

Summoning up the vanished world of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, Elizabeth Loudon’s richly evocative story of one family calls into question British attitudes and policies in Iraq and offers up a penetrating reflection on cross-cultural marriage and the lives of women caught between different worlds.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
A BEST NEW BOOK OF 2023 (THE NEW ARAB)
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)

A man disappears without trace and the detective in search of him finds more than he expected

In Rouiba, a nondescript suburb of Algiers, an unnamed man with a troubled past escapes his everyday life to find himself caring for an old man with dementia. When the man dies, the carer disappears into thin air. A police detective is assigned to investigate the circumstances of the old man’s demise and to track down the caretaker, only to find that the unnamed man cannot be identified—that there is no trace of Mr. Nobody. The officer’s search leads him to those whose paths once crossed Mr. Nobody’s. In each of them he finds a reflection of the man he is looking for.

A raw, lyrical portrait of life on the margins in contemporary Algiers, this haunting noir captures an underworld of police informers, shady imams, bootleg beer traders, and grave robbers, and reverberates with echoes of Algeria’s violent past.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
A BEST NEW BOOK OF 2023 (THE NEW ARAB)
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)

A man disappears without trace and the detective in search of him finds more than he expected

In Rouiba, a nondescript suburb of Algiers, an unnamed man with a troubled past escapes his everyday life to find himself caring for an old man with dementia. When the man dies, the carer disappears into thin air. A police detective is assigned to investigate the circumstances of the old man’s demise and to track down the caretaker, only to find that the unnamed man cannot be identified—that there is no trace of Mr. Nobody. The officer’s search leads him to those whose paths once crossed Mr. Nobody’s. In each of them he finds a reflection of the man he is looking for.

A raw, lyrical portrait of life on the margins in contemporary Algiers, this haunting noir captures an underworld of police informers, shady imams, bootleg beer traders, and grave robbers, and reverberates with echoes of Algeria’s violent past.

A lawyer-turned-terrorist is catapulted on a mission traversing Cairo, Sudan, Paris and Afghanistan in this revenge thriller deftly-written by a Middle East political insider

A lifetime ago, Fakhreddin had been an idealistic young lawyer, seeking to fight corruption from his modest quarter of Cairo. Then, a botched attempt on his life forced him to flee the country, propelling him on a wild journey that would lead to Afghanistan’s jihadi training camps.

He was transformed into a trained killer, and never once lost sight of his goal: revenge. But did he lose sight of the only person that really mattered to him, his son, Omar?

At the very core of Fakhreddin’s bold, nail-biting exploits are his broken family, and broken heart, and his search for redemption and a way home.

WINNER OF THE 2019 PRIX DE LA LITTÉRATURE ARABE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

A sensitive and courageous account of life as a gay man in Egypt and

Hani was out for an evening stroll near Cairo’s Tahrir Square when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. An informant had identified him, and he was thrown into the back of a police truck. There began a seven-month nightmare as he was swept up, along with fifty other men, in the infamous Queen Boat affair that targeted Egypt’s gay community.

Finally free, but traumatized into speechlessness, Hani writes down the events of his life—his first sexual desires, his relationship with his mother, his marriage of convenience, and his passion for Abdel Aziz, the only man he ever truly loved.

In the Spider’s Room is a bold tale of sexuality and persecution in contemporary Egypt.

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)

Palestinian–Armenian Ivana eloped with a British doctor in the 1940s, in the midst of the Nakba, and emigrated to England. Over half a century later, her daughter Julie has been tasked with Ivana’s dying wish: to take her ashes back to their old home in Acre. She and her husband Walid leave London and embark on a journey to Palestine.

Written in four parts, each as a concerto movement, Rabai al-Madhoun’s pioneering new novel explores Palestinian exile, with all its complex loyalties and identities. Broad in scope and sweeping in its history, it lays bare the tragedy of everyday Palestinian life.

WINNER OF THE NAQUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)

In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times)

Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. She and her siblings and mother are slowly choked in violence and decay, as their lives are plundered by a brutal regime.

Set between the 1960s and 2000s, No Knives in the Kitchens of this City unravels the systems of fear and control under Assad. With eloquence and startling honesty, it speaks of the persecution of a whole society.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

A horror-filled obituary on Egypt's failed revolution

2025: fourteen years after the failed revolution, Egypt is invaded once more. As traumatized Egyptians eke out a feral existence in Cairo's dusty downtown, former cop Ahmed Otared joins a group of fellow officers seeking Egypt's liberation through the barrel of a gun.

As Cairo becomes a foul cauldron of drugs, sex, and senseless violence, Otared finally understands his country's fate.

In this unflinching and grisly novel, Mohammad Rabie envisages a grim future for Egypt, where death is the only certainty.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

An intimate and remarkably human novel of modern Iraq 

Displaced by the sectarian violence in the city, Maha and her husband are taken in by a distant cousin, Youssef. As the growing turmoil around them seeps into their household, a rare argument breaks out between the elderly Youssef and his young guest. Born into sanctions and war, Maha knows nothing of Iraq's good years that Youssef holds dear.

Set over a single day, The Baghdad Eucharist is an intimate story of love, memory, and anguish in one Christian family.

WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)

"Exquisitely lyrical language."—Financial Times

An epic of love and revenge in a time of war and slavery

At the close of the nineteenth century, freed slave Bakhit is let out of prison with the overthrow of the Mahdist state in Sudan. On the brink of death, the memory of his beloved Theodora is all that has sustained him through seven years of grim incarceration—that and his vow to avenge her killing.
Set against a backdrop of war, religious fervor, and the monumental social and political upheavals of the time, The Longing of the Dervish is a love story in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Lyrical and evocative, Hammour Ziada’s masterfully crafted novel is about sorrow, hope, and the cruelty of fate.

WINNER OF THE 2026 NEUSTADT INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE ~ SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

"Nasrallah's intensely eloquent voice gives Western audiences an insight into the lives of the marginalized "—New Statesman

Spanning the collapse of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate in Palestine, this is the story of three generations of a defiant family from the Palestinian village of Hadiya before 1948

Through the lives of Mahmud, elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled’s grandson Naji, we enter the life of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another. Khaled’s remarkable white mare, Hamama, and her descendants feel and share the family’s struggles and as a siege grips Hadiya, it falls to Khaled to save his people from a descending tyranny.

"Abdelilah Hamdouchi seems to have found the formula for the emergence of the Moroccan detective novel."—Liberation Kaleidoscope

When young and handsome Othman married Sofia—sophisticated, French, rich, and forty years his senior—he found his ticket out of a life of desperate poverty in the slums of Casablanca.

But when Sofia is brutally murdered, the police quickly zero in on Othman as the prime suspect.

With his mistress, the love of his life, waiting in the wings he certainly has motive. But is he guilty? Or has he been framed by an overzealous, corrupt police force?

"The Final Bet is a great introduction to Moroccan policiers--at once very familiar to western crime fiction readers, but then very Moroccan too as family loyalties, filial debts and traditional prejudices all swirl around the case."—Literary Hub

Compelling and visceral, with a seductive, muscular irony, The Men Who Swallowed the Sun is an unforgettable novel of two men and their fellow migrants and the extreme marginalization that drives them.

A story of betrayal, desire, and family drama, written by a giant of Egyptian popular fiction who shocked readers in the 1950s when this Lolita-esque novel first appeared and whose work has never before been available in English

Sixteen-year-old Nadia had been raised by her father, after her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Indulged and petulant, she remained the only female in her father’s life. But when she returns from boarding school to find that he has remarried without her knowledge, she conspires to restore her rightful place, creating misery, confusion, and a flood of unexpected consequences in her wake.

Written as a letter, a confession, by now twenty-one-year old Nadia, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s classic novel of revenge and betrayal challenges patriarchal norms with its strong female characters and brazen sexuality, and continues to speak to the complex human condition. It dives into middle-class life, and lays bare the repressed desires, seething jealousies, and complicated dramas of family.

Abdel Kouddous’s masterpiece I Do Not Sleep was adapted into a classic of Egyptian cinema in 1957, and its publication for the first time in English is an international publishing event.