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The Muslim World in Fiction

All titles shelved in Fiction collection, except as noted: SS=short stories.

Anthologies

—: The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction

(2006)

SS

This dazzling anthology features the work of 79 outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south.
—: An Arabian Mosaic: Short Stories by Arab Women Writers

(1993)

SS
—: Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction

(2004)

SS

This collection offers up a mix of new and previously published works, creating a literary road map to Arab American literature today.
—: In a Fertile Desert: Modern Writing from the United Arab Emirates

(2009)

SS

Here, for the first time, is a volume of short stories from the United Arab Emirates, a selective sampling of a burgeoning literary output since the 1970s by the leading Arabic-English translator.
—: Oranges in the Sun: Short Stories from the Arabian Gulf

(2008)

SS
—: Under the Naked Sky: Short Stories from the Arab World

(2000)

SS

From the renowned translator of Arabic works into English, a diverse collection of voices from throughout the Arab World.

General Fiction

Aboulela, Leila: Minaret

(2005)

Najwa never imagined that one day she would be a maid. Exiled to London and soon thereafter orphaned, the upperclass Sudanese refugee falls in love with her employer's brother--a love that should not be. This novel is an illuminating glimpse into a culture few westerners understand.
Ali, Monica: Brick Lane

(2003)

After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man 20 years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born.
Ali, Tariq: The Book of Saladin

(1998)

Set in 12th-century Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem, this is the fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as dictated to a Jewish scribe.
Aslam, Nadeem: Maps for Lost Lovers

(2005)

Set in an unnamed town in England, this is a deeply felt, lyrical, and moving novel about a Pakistani family at a crossroads of culture, nationality, religion, and the most intimate crises of faith.
Aswani, Alao: The Yacoubian Building

(2004)

From the pious son of the building's doorkeeper and the raucous, impoverished squatters on its roof, via the tattered aristocrat and the gay intellectual in its apartments, to the ruthless businessman whose stores occupy its ground floor, each sharply etched character embodies a facet of modern Egypt.
Firouz, Anahita: In the Walled Gardens

(2002)

Set in a world on the brink of destruction — Iran before the revolution — this novel tells the story of a doomed love affair.
Guene, Faiza: Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

(2006)

A hopeful, wise, and intimate portrait of Arab immigrant life, the story follows Doria, a 15-year-old Muslim French girl living in the infamous Paradise projects of suburban Paris. Disarmingly funny and fresh.
Gurnah, Abdulrazak: Desertion

(2005)

Two lives and cultures collide in passionate, illicit love affair that reverberates across continents and through three generations.
Hamad, Turki: Adama

(2003)

In his tranquil middle-class Riyadh neighborhood, 18-year-old Hisham doesn't quite fit in. He's a budding philosopher who spends his days reading banned books and developing his political ideals. His Saudi Arabia is a nation embroiled in internal conflict, torn between ancient tradition and newfound prosperity.
Haq, Hina: Sadika's Way: A Novel of Pakistan and America

(2004)

Culture clashes and family characters worthy of a modern Jane Austen.
Hosseini, Khaled: The Kite Runner

(2003)

The first Afghan novel to be written in English, this is an epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the United States and back to contemporary Afghanistan.
Khadra, Yasmina: The Attack

(2006)

Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a respected surgeon in Tel Aviv. When police declare that his dead wife was the suicide bomber who destroyed a restaurant, he is torn between cherished memories of their years together and the inescapable realization that the woman he loved had a life far removed from the comfortable existence they shared.
Khalifah, Sahar: The Inheritance

(2005)

Set against the emotionally charged background of the early 1990s, the story follows a woman as she returns to her homeland and tries to adapt to her new life on the West Bank after years spent in Kuwait.
Khan, Uzma Aslam: Trespassing

(2004)

This sweeping novel of modern Pakistan takes us deep into a world of radical contrasts, from the stifling demands of tradition and family to the daily oppression of routine political violence, from the gorgeous sensual vistas of the silk farms to the teeming streets of Karachi.
Khudayri, Batul: Absent

(2006)

This is the story of Dalal, a young Iraqi woman living with the childless aunt and uncle who raised her. Dalal and her neighbors try to maintain normal lives, despite the crippling effect of bombings and international sanctions.
Khuri, Ilyas: Gate of the Sun

(2005)

The Palastinian saga is recounted in tales spun from love and loss.
Lalami, Laila: Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

(2005)

In this debut of an exciting new voice in fiction, Lalami evokes the grit and enduring grace that is modern Morocco. The book begins as four Moroccans illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain. What has driven them to risk their lives?
Mahfuz, Najib: The Cairo Trilogy

(2001)

Nobel Prize–winning Mahfuz's masterwork, this is the saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early decades of the 20th century. The novels trace three generations of the tyrannical patriarch Ahmad Abd al-Jawad's family.
Moshiri, Farnoosh: The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree

(2004)

Winner of the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction 2003, this book includes stories set in both Iran and the United States.
Nassib, Sélim: I Loved You for Your Voice

(2006)

Based on the life of Om Kalthoum, told from the perspective of the man who wrote lyrics for her songs and loved her in vain.
Nye, Naomi Shihab: Habibi

(1997)

Fourteen-year-old Liyana Abboud loves to hear her father call her habibi—Arabic for "darling." But she's not prepared for her family's decision to move from St. Louis to Jerusalem.
Pamuk, Orhan: Snow

(2004)

Ka, a Turkish poet, is drained of feeling and inspiration by years of lonely political exile in Germany. But when he becomes stranded in a Turkish border town, he will discover whether he is brave enough to seize a last chance for happiness.
Parsipur, Shahrnush: Touba and the Meaning of Night

(2006)

This complex epic captures the changing fortunes of Iranian women in the twentieth century from the eras of colonialism to the rule of two shahs to the Islamic revolution of 1980. Touba's long life intersects with many memorable characters and refutes Western stereotypes of Iranian women.
Qashu, Sayed: Let it be Morning

(2006)

An Arab-Israeli struggles with his dual identity.
Radojcic-Kane, Natasha: Homecoming

(2002)

Set in the aftermath of the Bosnian War, this debut novel addresses the effects of war on the human spirit. When Halid, a Muslim war hero, returns home after the Bosnian war, he finds that his own battles have just begun.
Rahimi, Atiq: Earth and Ashes

(2004)

When the Soviet army arrives in Afghanistan, the elderly Dastaguir witnesses the destruction of his village. He and his grandson set out through an unforgiving landscape, searching for the coal mine where the old man's son works.
Rushdie, Salman: East, West: Stories

(1996)

Nine stories that reveal the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between East and West.
Shafak, Elif: The Gaze

(2006)

Set in 1880's Istanbul, freak-show performers find love and meet the stares of strangers.
Shaykh, Hanan: Beirut Blues

(1995)

Asmahan writes letters — to make sense of her life and to preserve her fond memories of Beirut as it existed before civil strife destroyed it forever.
Soueif, Ahdaf: The Map of Love

(2000)

At either end of the 20th century, two women fall in love with men outside their familiar worlds. In 1901, Anna Winterbourne finds herself enraptured with Egypt and with Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi. Nearly 100 years later, Isabel Parkman, Anna and Sharif's descendant, is in love with a gifted and difficult Egyptian-American.
Takarli, Fu'ad: The Long Way Back

(2001)

The story of four generations of the same family living in an old house in the Bab al-Shaykh area of Baghdad.
Tawfiq, Ahmad: Abu Musa's Women Neighbors: A Historical Novel from Morocco

(2006)

A tale of passion and mysticism set in the 14th century.
Toer, Pramoedya Ananta: This Earth of Mankind

(1991)

The first novel in the Buru Quartet tells of the adventures of Minke, a young Javanese student living equally amongst the Dutch colonists and the colonized Javanese of late 19th century.
Yunus, Iman Humaydan: B as in Beirut

(2008)

The four interlocking narratives that make up this extraordinary novel belong to four women who live in the same apartment building in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war.