As you may already know, I like to read. A lot. During our RTW trip, I thought it would enhance my experience to read books set in the countries I visited (or books by authors from those countries). To share my reading journey with you, I started a Read Around the World series on this blog. Usually I share books inspired by a particular country or geographic area, but today, I wanted to share a list of books by Arab authors to celebrate Arab American Heritage Month (April).
The following countries comprise the Arab world: Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Although this month recognizes Arab American heritage, I try to read widely from around the world, so I also included Arab authors who still live in their home countries and those who have immigrated to other nations besides the U.S. Specific nationalities and identities for each author will be noted below.
Please note this list of books by Arab authors is not exhaustive; it’s not even close! I tried to include a good spread of countries here, so I’ve limited my selections to a maximum of two books per country (and I didn’t cover every country). If you’re looking for more books set in or written by an author from a particular country, please feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll let you know about any others I’ve read and loved that didn’t make it onto this list.
Note: In an effort to keep this list manageable, I’ve (almost) only included books by Arab authors that I have personally read. If you want to see more of my reading recommendations by Arab writers and books on my TBR, check out my Bookshop.org list featuring Arab authors.
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
This debut multigenerational family saga by a Palestinian American poet is likely the novel I have recommended more times than any other single novel I’ve read. Yes, it is a beautiful book, but it was also the first time I remember reading about Palestine and its people in fiction, which has since inspired me to pick up Palestinian novels and other books by Arab authors when I see them (hence, how I found many of the titles on this list!).
I also highly recommend Hala Alyan’s sophomore novel, The Arsonists’ City (which is primarily set in Lebanon, Syria and the United States) and her poetry.
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
And this is the book that has come closest to filling the Salt Houses-sized hole in my heart! Although it is not a multigenerational story, Against the Loveless World also takes place over decades and crosses borders along the way, from Kuwait to Jordan to Palestine. The story begins with a Palestinian woman in an Israeli prison cell, and the rest of the book tells us how she got there. The beginning of the book is quite rough (graphic sexual violence), but if you find yourself balking in the beginning, please know that it does get easier to read (though it’s by no means an “easy” read). On a lighter note, the descriptions of food in this book are particularly mouthwatering and definitely made me miss the fantastic dishes we ate in Jordan.
Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
I just started this book on April 1 to mark the beginning of Arab American Heritage Month, but it has been on my TBR for a long time. Edited by a Lebanese British journalist, this essay collection contains 19 essays by sahafiyat (female journalists) reporting across the Arab world.
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
This debut novel by a Syrian American author is set in parallel timelines: In 2011, a Syrian American girl moves back to Syria from New York after a family tragedy. To comfort herself in her new surroundings, she tells herself the story of Rawiya, a 12th-century girl who disguised herself as a boy to act as an apprentice for a famous mapmaker traveling across the Middle East. Often in novels with two timelines, I prefer the historical journey, but in this book I actually found myself more drawn to the contemporary story.
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami
Audiobook available on Libro.fm (narrated by the author!)
Moroccan American writer Laila Lalami is perhaps best known for her fiction (including The Other Americans and The Moor’s Account), but it is her memoir that I want to highlight here. In this book, Lalami uses her own experience immigrating to the United States and securing her citizenship to tell a larger story of the way Arab Americans are treated in society today.
An Unlasting Home by Mai Al-Nakib
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
An Unlasting Home is a debut multigenerational novel by a Kuwait-born author. It publishes soon on April 12, 2022, but I just started an advance copy (thanks to the publisher, HarperCollins), and in the first 20 percent of the book I’ve already traveled to Kuwait, Lebanon, Iraq and India, so I think this is going to be my type of book!
Home is Not A Country by Safia Elhillo
Audiobook available on Libro.fm (narrated by the author!)
This YA novel in verse first landed on my radar thanks to a blurb by Elizabeth Acevedo, who also writes and narrates amazing audiobooks. It features a Sudanese American girl trying to fit in to her suburban American hometown and exploring her identity and family relationships.
Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
For another book in verse, this middle grade novel by a Jordanian American author features a Syrian girl who moves to the United States with her mother, leaving her father and brother behind in their home country.
Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
I found this memoir by one of the co-founders of the “first modern bookstore” in Cairo to be fascinating. Wassef founded Diwan, an independent bookstore, with her sister and her friend in 2002. Each chapter of the book corresponds with a different section of the bookstore (e.g. “The Cafe,” “Business and Management,” “Art and Design”), and I learned a ton about Egyptian history and culture generally. My only quibble with this book is that it didn’t come out before I visited Egypt in 2019, and I didn’t visit any of the Diwan locations! Next time….
No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
Written by a Lebanon-born author, this 2022 novel features a young Syrian couple living in the U.S. who is separated by the real-life 2017 executive order that banned travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries (including Syria).
In the Country of Others by Leïla Slimani
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
Leïla Slimani is perhaps best known for The Perfect Nanny, her chilling Paris-set novel based on a real-life murder, but I’m featuring In the Country of Others on this Arab Heritage Month reading list because it taught me a lot about an area of world history I knew embarrassingly little (or nothing) about: the post-WWII era in North Africa. Set in Morocco, the novel tells the story of a white French woman who moves to Morocco with her Arab husband after he fights in France during WWII. It is the first in a planned trilogy loosely based on the lives of the author’s own grandparents.
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
I picked up this collection by a Yemeni American poet last year because I saw it won the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and was published by Graywolf Press (one of my favorite indie publishers). Plus, I was trying to read widely from around the world and hadn’t read any books from Yemen yet. I often found myself getting to the end of a poem and immediately re-reading it. This may be because I don’t read a lot of poetry and sometimes needed two reads to understand the poem, but it was also because I savored the language and devices.
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi
Audiobook available on Libro.fm
Okay, this is the one book on this list that I haven’t read, but it’s the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English, and I have been meaning to read it for so long. I’m putting it on this list to make myself accountable and hopefully push it up the priority TBR.
In addition to the above books, I also wanted to recommend a podcast: Kerning Cultures. The Kerning Cultures Network produces many podcasts in Arabic, but they also have an English-language podcast called Kerning Cultures that features great storytelling. Their tagline is “stories from the Middle East and North Africa, and the spaces in between,” and I don’t think I can say it better than that. Give it a listen!
What are your favorite books by Arab authors? Leave your recommendations in the comments!
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Featured image: Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt (November 2019)
