The following selection of books have been recommended and reviewed by the LEILA project’s jury members who are Arabic literature specialists, many of them translators and writers themselves. These recommendations have been chosen with European publishers in mind, who are interested in finding out more about books from the Arab world. When available, contact information for foreign rights (author, agent, or publisher) is provided.
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A tightly paced queer romance that explores how the relationships we build make us who we are -
A journey into Bedouin life and history in northern Syria -
Multiple themes, such as women’s place in society, and the beauty and depth of Arabic calligraphy are threaded through this novel which takes place during and after Lebanon’s civil war -
A writer caught between two lives, two languages, two women -
A vibrant and clever polyphonic tale of twentieth-century Muscat -
The tragic life of a female writer in 1960’s Dubai -
A woman confronts her family’s displacement and dysfunction -
A Libyan love story that questions ideas of gender and masculinity -
Set in a remote mountain village, under the guise of a murder mystery, myths, illusions, and dreams play out among the villagers -
Rimbaud seen through the eyes of his Abyssinian lover -
A horror mystery that is also an allegory about the writing process -
A page-turner about betrayal, guilt, and generational trauma -
A marginalised Algerian neighbourhood tells one last tale -
Twelve stories about women’s lives in modern Morocco -
A Yazidi woman in northern Iraq fights against ISIS -
A timely collection of stories about what happens when life suddenly goes wrong, from one of the finest authors of short fiction writing in Arabic today -
A rich exploration of the ambiguous place of one queer man within the close-knit fabric of working-class Tripolitanian life -
Memoir and meta-narrative combine in a unique work of anti-prison literature. -
A 30-year-old privileged Egyptian man consumed by his fears and desires, set to the backdrop of the 2011 Egyptian revolution -
An investigation into the life of an Egyptian female writer who committed suicide in 1963