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Celestial Bodies (2018)
7.3/10on Open Library
Published
Translated by Marilyn Booth
In the Omani village of al-Awafi, one sister marries after heartbreak, another out of duty, and a third waits for the man she loves to return from Canada. Alharthi lets their different choices open onto changing fortunes across the village. Start here if you want a family saga that makes room for the people whom wealth leaves behind.
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The Final Bet (2008)
Published
Translated by Jonathan Smolin
When a wealthy French woman is killed in Casablanca, her younger husband Othman immediately looks like an easy suspect. Read this compact detective novel for the way money and social position shape what the police are prepared to believe. The pleasure lies in looking past the version of the marriage everyone thinks they understand.
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Only in London (1998)
Published
Translated by Catherine Cobham
A turbulent flight from Dubai puts a Moroccan woman, an Iraqi divorcee, a British art specialist, and a Lebanese man transporting a monkey on a collision course. The resulting London novel is funny about the identities people try on. Amira’s decision to pass as a princess is a good taste of its farcical side.
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The Doves Necklace (2014)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Translated by Katharine Halls and Adam Talib
In The Dove’s Necklace, a woman’s body is discovered in a Mecca alley that has its own voice and memories. Choose this if the idea of a city infiltrating a murder investigation appeals to you. The lane’s perspective makes the architecture and intimate lives of Mecca as engrossing as the detective’s work.
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The bamboo stalk (2015)
Published
Translated by Jonathan Wright
The son of a Filipino domestic worker and a Kuwaiti father grows up in the Philippines expecting Kuwait to welcome him one day. Follow him across the two countries for a family story about how the same parentage can be read differently depending on where he stands.
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The Queue (2016)
Published
Translated by Elisabeth Jaquette
Yehia needs official permission to get a bullet removed, and the Gate that grants permissions won’t open. Waiting puts him next to people with very different things to lose. It’s a sharp, short dystopia for readers who can imagine how much power there is in making people stand in line.
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The Bride of Amman (2015)
Published
Translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
Marriage means different things to the young people whose stories cross in Amman. The book moves among their voices so that a decision that looks straightforward from one side of a family sounds very different from another. Pick it for a city novel that takes desire and family expectation equally seriously.
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Drowning (2021)
Published
Translated by Paul G. Starkey
In The Drowning, when a body washes up near a rural Sudanese town, Fatima goes to the Nile in case it brings back news of her own missing daughter. The book’s shifting chronology brings the histories of several women into view. Choose it if you’re ready for a hard story whose rhythms come from life beside the river.
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Land Without Jasmine (2012)
Published
Translated by William M. Hutchins
A university student disappears in Sana’a. Jasmine has left a diary, and the investigator hears a series of self-serving accounts from the people around her. Read this short mystery for the tension between what a woman has to say about herself and what her neighbors are sure they know.
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No Knives in the Kitchens of This City (2016)
Published
Translated by Leri Price
Follow Sawsan and her family through decades of life in Aleppo as she puts her faith in one possible refuge after another. Khalifa shows how public fear seeps into a household. It’s a demanding choice for a reader who wants to spend time with a family as that pressure accumulates.
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Frankenstein in Baghdad (2018)
Published
Translated by Jonathan Wright
A junk dealer assembles a body from remains he finds in Baghdad and discovers that his creation has plans of its own. The monster story makes room for bits of daily life and mordant comedy. Pick it for horror that keeps asking whose deaths the city is able to notice.
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The open door (2002)
Published
Translated by Marilyn Booth
When her brother comes home wounded from an anti-British demonstration in Cairo in 1946, Layla begins to rethink the place she’s expected to occupy. This is an intimate coming-of-age novel first. Its politics have force because you can follow them into what a young woman is allowed to choose for herself.
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Italian (2021)
Published
Translated by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil
In The Italian, at his father’s funeral, Abdel Nasser attacks the imam. The book circles back through student politics in Tunis and his relationship with the independent-minded Zeina to make sense of the outburst. It’s an engrossing choice if the arguments people have at university and whom they fall in love with seem inseparable.
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Image, Icon, and Covenant (2013)
Published
Translated by Aida Bamia
In The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant, Ibrahim returns to Ramallah decades after abandoning Mariam. His effort to find her sends him across places he thought he had left behind. Read it if you like the way a private, unfinished love story can bring a whole map of allegiances and belonging back into view.
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The Book of Disappearance (2014)
Published
Translated by Sinan Antoon
A Palestinian man vanishes along with other Palestinians, and his Israeli neighbor has access to the notebook he left behind. The premise is speculative, but much of the novel’s force comes from family memories of Jaffa. Choose it for the way one person’s words can complicate a story another has been telling himself.
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The Bridges Of Constantine (2013)
Published
Translated by Raphael Cohen
An Algerian painter in Paris falls for the novelist daughter of his former commander. Pick this for a love story that has to contend with a revolutionary past both lovers inherit differently. The first book of a trilogy, it offers a way into modern Algerian history through the distance between two people.
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