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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Contemporary Syria from a dark psychedelic perspective -
An officer effortlessly slaughters a rival ethnic group before realising he is part of it as well -
In this novel, the Saudi writer Omaima El Khamis tells a fascinating story that takes place during the 11th century -
An ironic cookbook and serious socio-political commentary -
A love spell that travels across time and space -
What would happen if all the Palestinians in Israel suddenly disappeared? -
Can philosophical enquiry bring us home to our Mother Earth? -
Nine short stories that bring Virginia Woolf to Morocco -
An intimate conversation about past relationships -
A debut collection of deeply affecting poems about a young woman’s experience living through the trauma of the Syrian revolution in 2011 -
History overwhelms an ordinary family -
A story about a family and the absurdity of civil war written in the magical realism genre -
Traces the history of a city through its scents -
Syria 2009: political prisoners and asylum seekers live in waiting -
A collection of prose poems set in Iraq of the 1990s and early 2000s -
A view onto the richness of Sudanese Arab and African cultures through an encounter between a warrior and his healer
