Fiction from the Arabic World

Palace Walk  by Naguib Mahfouz
The first volume in a trilogy, this rich family saga follows a middle-class merchant family through Cairo in the early 1900s – a time when the city was occupied by British forces.

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
This multi-generational saga was short-listed for the Booker Prize and is at its heart a romance, telling the parallel love stories of two Egyptian women separated by a century.

Bliss by Zulfu Livaneli
The paths of three characters converge to illustrate, perhaps too patly, the conflicts of contemporary Turkey. Raped by her uncle, the sheikh, 15-year-old villager Meryem has shamed her family. To save the family name, Cemal, the sheikh's son, a soldier home from his tour fighting Kurds in the Gabar Mountains, is ordered by his father to take Meryem to Istanbul and to murder her.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions.

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love is a massive family saga, a story that draws its readers into two moments in the complex, troubled history of modern Egypt. The story begins in 1977 in New York. There Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk full of documents – some in English, some in Arabic – in her dying mother's apartment. Incapable of deciphering this stash by herself, she turns to Omar al-Ghamrawi, a man with whom she is falling in love. And Omar directs her in turn to his sister Amal in Cairo.

The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
Set in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban, this extraordinary novel takes readers into the lives of two couples: Mohsen, who comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; and Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, who was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face.

The Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber
When a handsome professor of Arabic literature and Iraqi exile enters her life, single, 39-year-old Sirine finds herself falling in love and, in the process, starts questioning her identity as an Arab-American.

The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua
Yochanan Rivlin, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Haifa University, is equally determined to understand the causes of the Algerian civil war of the 1990s and the mystery of his son's divorce. His is a double search for truth, each involving a different bride – Samaher, his own research assistant, an ambitious Arab newlywed from a village in the Galilee and Galya, who deserted his son in Jerusalem with no explanation.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
An exiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his memories of the radiant Ipek, now recently divorced. Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, Ka finds himself pursued by figures ranging from Ipek's ex-husband to a charismatic terrorist.

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
This controversial bestselling novel in the Arab world reveals the political corruption, sexual repression, religious extremism and modern hopes of Egypt today. All manner of flawed and fragile humanity reside in the Yacoubian Building, a once-elegant temple of Art Deco splendor now slowly decaying in the smog and bustle of downtown Cairo.

Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea
In her debut novel Rajaa Alsanea reveals the social, romantic and sexual tribulations of four young women from the elite classes of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Every week after Friday prayers, an anonymous female narrator sends e-mails to the subscribers of her online listserv. In 50 such e-mails, spanning more than a year, the Scheherazade-like narrator unfolds, little by little, the comic-tragic reality of a small group of girlfriends.