Middle Eastern literature

The One Facing Us

by Ronit Matalon & Marsha Weinstein

A richly colored narrative of a flamboyant Jewish-Egyptian family and its dispersal across three continents, from Israel's most original new novelist.

Esther, seventeen years old, wild and rebellious, is sent...

Bliss

by Ronit Matalon & Jessica Cohen

Set in Tel Aviv and Paris, a powerful story of love, friendship, regret, and war, as current as today's headlines

Ronit Matalon's fiction has been praised as "haunting," "inventive," "refreshingly daring." Now...

Souffle

by Asli Perker

Three troubled lives, one cookbook: a recipe for self-discovery . . . Lilia wakes up one morning to discover that her marriage is not what it seemed. Marc cannot face his empty apartment after the loss of his...

The Silence and the Roar

by Nihad Sirees

The Silence and the Roar takes place in an unnamed Middle Eastern country resembling Syria. The story follows a day in the life of Fathi Chin, an author banned from publishing because he refuses to write propaganda...

The Serenity Murders

Hop-Çiki-Yaya #4

by Mehmet Murat Somer & Amy Marie Spangler

Oh, no! Burçak Veral—kickboxing transvestite, nightclub owner, Audrey Hepburn lookalike, and amateur sleuth—has finally been invited to strut her stuff on a local television show. But during her appearance,...

We Are All Equally Far from Love

by Adania Shibli & Paul Starkey

A new award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of Touch

A young woman, asked at work to write a letter to an older man, does as she is told. So begins an enigmatic but passionate love affair conducted entirely...

The Sultan of Byzantium

by Selcuk Altun, Clifford Endres & Selhan Endres

Fighting the Ottoman invaders in Constantinople in 1453, Emperor Constantine XI was killed, his body never found. Legend has it that he escaped in a Genoese ship, cheating certain death at the hands of the Turks...

The Diesel

by Thani Al-Suwaidi & William M. Hutchins

Critically shunned when it was first published in 1994, nearly two decades before the rest of the world ever envisioned an Arab Spring, Emirati author Thani Al-Suwaidi saw a cultural shift on the horizon and...

Before the Throne

by Naguib Mahfouz

Nearly sixty of Egypt’s past leaders—from the time of the Pharoahs to the twentieth century—are summoned to judgment in the Court of Osiris in the Afterlife, in this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize–winning...

The Fall of the Imam

by Nawal El Saadawi

Who will overthrow the Imam? Who will defeat the oppression, the tyranny, the injustice and the killings? ... Then, who is the Imam? Is he the man, the male, the father, the husband, the ruler, the leader? Bint...

Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

by Etgar Keret, Miriam Shlesinger, Nathan Englander & Sondra Silverston

Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Keret’s new collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of yearning. In his most playful and most...

The Others

by Siba al-Harez

A best-seller in Arabic, The Others is a literary tour de force, offering a glimpse into one of the most repressive societies in the world. Siba al-Harez tells the story of a nameless teenager at a girls’...

Songs My Mother Never Taught Me

by Selcuk Altun, Ruth Christie & Selcuk Berilgen

After the death of his overbearing mother, the privileged Arda reclines in his wealth, reflecting on his young life, and on the life of his father, the famous mathematician Mürsel Ergenekon, who was murdered...

Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

Kemal Kuray is lucky to escape with his life after his beloved F-16 hurtles to the ground in a test flight. Convalescence comes in the form of a comfortable monthly allowance and an opulent apartment in a mysterious...

Morning and Evening Talk

by Naguib Mahfouz

This unusual epic from the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz portrays five generations of one sprawling family against the upheavals of two centuries of modern Egyptian history.Set in Cairo, Morning and Evening...

The Prophet Murders

Hop-Çiki-Yaya #2

by Mehmet Murat Somer

Something's gone seriously wrong in Istanbul - a killer is on the loose, and transvestites are being murdered, the modus operandi becoming increasingly bizarre with each death. Our protagonist - fellow transvestite,...

The White Castle: A Novel

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 1990

by Orhan Pamuk

From a Turkish writer who has been compared with Borges, Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a dazzling novel that is at once a captivating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise on the enigma of identity...

Mirage

by Soheir Khashoggi

Amira Badir, a young woman from a wealthy family in the Middle Eastern country of al-Remal, lives a life of luxury in opulent palaces. But repressive al-Remal discourages intelligence and initiative, so her...

Mosaic

by Soheir Khashoggi

Set against the bustling backdrop of New York City and the exotic splendor of Jordan, Mosaic is a story of love and betrayal, of a clash of cultures and traditions---and one woman's struggle to rebuild her life....

Katerina: A Novel

by Aharon Appelfeld

Fleeing an abusive home, Katerina, a teenage peasant in Ukraine in the 1880s, is taken in by a Jewish family and becomes their housekeeper. Feeling the warmth of family life for the first time and incorporating...