WINNER OF THE NAQUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURESHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTIONONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times)Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ru...

National Book Award Finalist: "The poetic and horrific combine in this tale of love and death set in a Syria torn apart by civil war" ( Guardian, UK).As elderly Abdel Latif dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus, he relays his final wish to his youngest son Bolbol: to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, he persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompa...

The night before Eid, three teenage boys hatch a plan to ‘borrow’ money so they can attend a fancy picnic, only to discover the money is cursed...After being injured in a bombing, a talented composer can no longer tell if his previous, ground-breaking compositions ever existed...Following the security services’ purge of his department, a government employee decides his only option is to kill his boss...After fourteen years of relentless ci...

Longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Fiction | One of The Washington Post's 50 best works of fiction of 2023"Gorgeous . . . Lush, elegiac [and] Márquezian . . . A novel of abundance and generosity." —Sarah Cypher, The Washington Post"Richly embroidered . . . [Khalifa's] galloping narration restores life and soul to a city that has become a byword for devastation." — The Economist

In 1980s Syria, a young Muslim girl lives a secluded life behind the veil in the vast and perfumed house of her grandparents. Her three aunts-the pious Maryam, the liberal Safaa, and the free-spirited Marwa-raise her with the aid of their ever-devoted blind servant.Soon the high walls of the family home are no longer able to protect the girl from the social and political chaos outside. Witnessing the ruling dictatorship's bloody campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, she is filled...

WINNER OF THE NAQUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURESHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTIONONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times)Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ru...

On a December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.Hanna was once a wealthy libertine, a landowner who built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. Bu...

Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination.Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly a...

"Berry richly evokes Port William's farmlands and hamlets, and his characters are fiercely individual, yet mutually protective in everything they do. . . . His sentences are exquisitely constructed, suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world." —New York Times Book ReviewA celebration of beloved American author Wendell Berry, the five stories in Fidelity return listeners to Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, and the familiar...

“This story of ordinary Syrians who fought tyranny is a masterpiece.” —The New York Times Book ReviewFrom Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, an epic and enthralling account of six Syrians fighting for a better world, in the tradition of classic works by Philip Gourevitch and Katherine Boo.In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew ...

The year is 1979. The Iranian Revolution is just around the corner, as is a once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse. Meanwhile, in the northeastern city of Naishapur, a retired judge and his wife, Bibi, run an ancient orchard, growing apples, plums, peaches, and sour cherries, and looking after several generations of family members. The days here are marked by long, elaborate lunches on the terrace and arguments about government corruption and the rise of religious fundamentalism, peppered with t...

""A bewitching political novel of contemporary Cairo that is also an engagé novel about sex, a romantic novel about power and a comic yet sympathetic novel about the vagaries of the human heart. Even the least politically oriented reader will find it engrossing."" — New York Times Book ReviewThese disparate lives careen toward an explosive conclusion in Alaa Al Aswany's remarkable international bestseller. Teeming with frank sexuality and ...