Middle East Literature

Beginning with an epilogue set in the present, this novel quickly moves back to the time of the generation after Muhammad—a time when North Africa, the home of the Berber peoples, was    More >

Prophetically named for a real war yet to come, Six Days depicts the struggle of a fictional city under siege. Barakat tells the story of shy lovers, friends, increasing fear and anger, and    More >

Jameel Farran, a Christian Arab, is forced to flee his destroyed Jerusalem in 1948. Teaching at Baghdad University, he falls in love with a beautiful Muslim girl, Sulafa, but their turbulent    More >

The final volume in a trilogy that includes The Flutes of Death and Mother Spring, Birth at Dawn extends to the eighth century the story of the arrival of Islam in Morocco and Algeria. First    More >

Seventeen short stories by such well-known writers as Abdullah, Idris, Mahfouz, Taher, Ibrahim, Sharouni, Fahmy, Sibai, and    More >

These twelve stories set in modern Pakistan capture the rich Urdu literary tradition, telling close, personal tales of family relationships, love, spirituality, dreams, and the interactions    More >

These twenty stories show the broad range of iconoclast, fabulist, realist, satirist, avant- gardist Aziz Nesin (1915-1995), long considered a major voice in contemporary Turkish fiction.    More >

Eleven essays by Western and Middle Eastern scholars evaluate the work of Naguib Mahfouz, arguably Egypt's greatest novelist, and the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. The    More >

Abdul-Baki’s stories, set in Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and Jerusalem, explore the themes of young women coming of age, the effects of civil war, and differences between East and West.    More >

Yusuf Idris is considered by many to be the greatest contemporary short-story writer working in Arabic. The 17 critical essays in this collection—some by critics in the Arab world and    More >

After many years abroad, Brahim, the author of stories about a detective (alter-ego) named Ali, returns to Morocco with his pregnant Scottish wife and two sons. Soon to join them are his    More >

In this turbulent novel of shame, violence, and hypocritical morality, the adolescent son of a repudiated mother grows up in a hostile, erotic, bourgeois world, where he must fight for his    More >

A revealing study of a girl growing to maturity in middle-class Syria and of her family’s struggle to survive in the tumultuous years of 1940–1961 in Damascus. Attar’s work    More >

Dealing with sexual mutilation, Accad’s lyrical, tragic novel shows woman as prisoner, victim, and target of man’s age-old preoccupation with domination by and fear of women. Set    More >

The violence of war leads to the euphoria of Algeria's newly won independence from France—and then quickly deteriorates into a harsh and cynical reality in this brutal yet lyrical    More >