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A magical story of a Crusade-era bookseller who embarks on a journey through the Islamic world's great medieval cities, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
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...
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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...
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Twin sisters Randa and Lamis live in the besieged Gaza Strip. Inseparable to the point that even their mother cannot tell them apart, they grow up surrounded by the random carnage that characterizes life under occupation. Randa, who wants to be a journalist, writes to record the devastation around her, taking pictures of martyred children. Meanwhile, their beloved neighbor Amna quietly converses with all those she has lost, as she plans the wedding...
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A sensitive and at times darkly humorous story of a young man's experience of illness, his contemplation of death, and his determination to maintain his independence through it all
Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction
After reading Kafka, K decides to write his own diary, but he is constantly frustrated by his lack of experiences: he is worn down by the drudgery of his corporate job for a faceless corporation and by his...
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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...
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After ten years in Paris, Galal returns to Cairo, where he finds a society in transformation. Egypt is Galal's home, but he feels he no longer belongs there. He is caught between his two identities: his Jewish mother's family are cosmopolitan business people, while his father's family are rural farmers from the Delta. Kamal Ruhayyim paints an uncompromising portrait of an older generation dictating how their children live and love. Menorahs and Minarets...
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In the 1970s, once-cosmopolitan Alexandria was at the forefront of the clash between Nasser's socialist-era principles and the burgeoning fundamentalist movement. Five idealistic students find themselves caught up in this tangled web, as their leftist activism makes them a target both from government surveillance and the Islamist groups seeking to curtail the city's social life. The group of friends' participation in the explosive 'bread riots' is...
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In a small Lebanese village a disillusioned imam, diagnosed with terminal cancer, must face his demons. Having consented to an arranged marriage, he has found himself in a loveless union and lusts after another. To please his family, he took up the robe and turban of his forefathers but the expected path to fulfillment did not unfold before him. Meticulous, sparse prose quietly evokes the essence of rural life and the burden of tradition. Hassan Daoud's...
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When he first showed up at Captain Ali's run-down boxing club, Saed was mocked for his bourgeois manners then humiliated in the ring. After barely a year of training, he has been consumed by the world of boxing and tipped for greatness. As his star rises, Saed is faced with the challenger he came for, but at what cost? Maan Abu Taleb's debut novel is one of heady victories and crushing defeats. Driven by direct, lean prose, All the Battles is a compelling...
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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,...
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This gritty tale of two men's ill-conceived quest for a better life via the deserts of the Middle East and the cities of Europe is pure storytelling
Two Bedouin men from Egypt's Western Desert seek to escape poverty through different routes. One-the intellectual, terminally self-doubting, and avowedly autobiographical Hamdi-gets no further than southern Libya's fly-blown oasis of Sabha, while his cousin-the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider-makes...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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A "spare, well-crafted and compelling" (Samah Selim) novel in which a man in Algiers disappears without trace and the detective in search of him finds more than he expected, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
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...
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