The year is shaping up to be an important one for Arab authors.
From novels excavating modern Egyptian history to memoirs emerging from Gaza’s devastation, these new books vary in style and subject but all expand the possibilities of literature. They blend family drama with political and cultural critique, reimagine history or look towards speculative futures, where even dreams are under surveillance.
Here are 11 books in English by Arab authors that are worth a read.
The Dissenters by Youssef Rakha
Youssef Rakha’s The Dissenters traces 70 years of Egyptian history through the fragmented portrait of a mother.
The novel follows a journalist named Nour, who after his mother’s death, withdraws to the attic and begins sifting through her belongings, piecing together a life that sharply reflects Egypt’s turbulent modern history. Nour weaves together his mother’s contradictory experiences in letters to his sister, written as if in a fever dream and elucidating a life shaped by marriage, politics, faith and revolution. The Dissenters fuses family drama with historical reflection, satire with metafiction.
Published on February 4
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against defies simple categorisation.
Written after Israel began its war on Gaza, the book is part memoir, part political mediation and reportage. At its core, it is a confrontation of the western world’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction.
Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian novelist known for American War, exposes how ideals of freedom and justice have collapsed under the guise of neutrality. The title of the book reflects how moral stances easily shift once violence has passed. El Akkad reflects upon these topics as he also recounts his own upbringing across Egypt, Qatar and Canada.
This is a book that is as philosophically rich as it is urgent.
Published on February 13
The Eyes of Gaza by Plestia Alaqad
In The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience, Plestia Alaqad turns her daily diary into a powerful memoir.
Alaqad was 21 years old when Israel began its attack on Gaza in October 2023. Within months, her social media videos and posts became vital documentation of the daily reality for Gazans as they fought to survive bombardment. Her work earned her the moniker The Eyes of Gaza.
Her book collects her diary entries into a stirring, first-hand account of the war. Alaqad records not only the destruction and fear but also the resilience of those around her, and the gestures of care and tenderness she witnessed across Gaza.
The Eyes of Gaza is an intimate and unflinching testimony and love letter to a homeland under fire.
Published on February 20
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami is known for her compelling storytelling and insightful examinations of culture and identity.
Her debut work Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, published in 2005, follows a group of Moroccan immigrants who attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Spain, in search of a better life. Her second work, The Moor’s Account, was a reimagining of the story of Estebanico, the Moroccan slave who became the first African to explore North America. Her mystery novel, The Other Americans, published in 2019, pivots around the death of a Moroccan immigrant in California after a hit-and-run.
While the novels share overlapping themes, they are also markedly different in genres, and underscore Lalami’s literary fearlessness. In The Dream Hotel, she takes another leap, this time in a near-distant future where, as the novel teases, “even dreams are under surveillance”.
Published on March 4
Motherhood and Its Ghosts by Iman Mersal
Motherhood and Its Ghosts leaps forth from the single photograph Iman Mersal has of her mother, who died in childbirth when the author was seven years old.
Through the photograph, Mersal ponders upon maternal identity while moving between journal entries and literary reflections. Originally published in 2017 in Arabic, the book has been released in English with a translation by Robin Moger.
Motherhood and Its Ghosts is a lyrical and profound examination of how we reconstruct and remember when confronted with absence.
Published on May 13
Sleep Phase by Mohamed Kheir
Sleep Phase follows a translator named Warif who struggles to readapt to life in Cairo after being released from prison where he was serving a seven-year sentence for Facebook posts criticising the government.
The Cairo he re-enters isn’t the city he remembers. The novel resembles the absurdist works of Kafka and Gogol as Warif tries to find work as a translator, going through an endless string of meetings with officials. The encounters are more like interrogations than job interviews, and Warif begins to experience panic attacks and flashbacks of his torture in prison. Sleep Phase is a wonderfully disorienting novel that comes as a study of repression.
Published on May 13
What Will People Think? by Sara Hamdan
A heartfelt novel about identity, family secrets and self-discovery, What Will People Think? recently made international headlines when it was featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The novel’s protagonist is Mia Almas, a Palestinian American who aspires to be a stand-up comedian while grappling with expectations of her traditional Arab family. Mia’s story – set in New York in 2011 – is intertwined with her grandmother’s hidden past. In the novel, Mia discovers a diary written by her “Teta” in 1940s Jaffa, just as she was on the verge of displacement during the Nakba.
The entries trace the life of a young woman celebrated as the village beauty, torn between her family’s expectations of a wealthy marriage and her own attraction to a British soldier. The romance is brief and ultimately devastating – a metaphor, perhaps, for Palestine’s unravelling.
Published on May 20
Empty Cages by Fatma Qandil
Empty Cages is new English translation of the 2022 winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.
The novel begins as its narrator discovers an old tin for chocolates that is filled with photographs and poems. As the youngest child in a middle-class Egyptian family, she revisits a childhood shadowed by the selfishness of her older brothers, her father’s addiction and her mother’s illness. Empty Cages is a gripping read as Qandil’s prose, translated by Adam Talib, capers off the page in a raw meditation on grief and survival.
Published on May 27
I’ll Tell You When I’m Home by Hala Alyan
With I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, Palestinian-American writer and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan turns to memoir after several acclaimed novels and poetry collections.
The book traces years of miscarriages and the decision to entrust another woman to carry her child. As the pregnancy progresses, Alyan excavates her family’s history of displacement across Palestine, Kuwait, Lebanon and the US. The result is a candid, polyphonic read about how private grief overlaps with diaspora, inheritance and the process of waiting.
Published on June 3
My Voice Cannot Be Bombed by Yahya Al Hamarna
My Voice Cannot Be Bombed is the debut poetry collection of Yahya Al Hamarna, written amid Israel’s continuing war on Gaza.
The collection, written with fierce and tender prosody, shifts from the intimacy of refugee tents to imagined spaces of freedom. Al Hamarna’s poems trace the violence of war alongside the small acts that sustain life, such as studying, walking to the park, reading poetry and making tea.
Published on August 11
The True Story of Raja the Gullible by Rabih Alameddine
Lebanese-American novelist Rabih Alameddine is known for works such as An Unnecessary Woman, The Angel of History, and The Hakawati, where he wove epic Arab storytelling traditions into contemporary story.
His fiction often takes on heavy themes such as exile and belonging with a satirical edge.
In his newest work, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, Alameddine reflects on life in Beirut with his idiosyncratic, caustic humour.
The novel follows a 63-year-old high school philosophy teacher who lives with his controlling mother in a small Beirut apartment. The relationship is described as “unbreakable and insane”. But Raja is invited to a writing residency in the US, and the timing seems like a good fortune as he is looking to escape the private and national calamities that shape his life.
Will be published on September 2
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pocketsAI traffic lights to ease congestion at seven points to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Street
The seven points are:
Shakhbout bin Sultan Street
Dhafeer Street
Hadbat Al Ghubainah Street (outbound)
Salama bint Butti Street
Al Dhafra Street
Rabdan Street
Umm Yifina Street exit (inbound)
The specs
Engine 60kwh FWD
Battery Rimac 120kwh Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (LiNiMnCoO2) chemistry
Power 204hp Torque 360Nm
Price, base / as tested Dh174,500
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pocketsThe specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 640hp
Torque: 760nm
On sale: 2026
Price: Not announced yet
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
David Haye record
Total fights: 32
Wins: 28
Wins by KO: 26
Losses: 4
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
An arms embargo
A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pocketsKilling of Qassem SuleimaniMatch statistics
Abu Dhabi Harlequins 36 Bahrain 32
Harlequins
Tries: Penalty 2, Stevenson, Teasdale, Semple
Cons: Stevenson 2
Pens: Stevenson
Bahrain
Tries: Wallace 2, Heath, Evans, Behan
Cons: Radley 2
Pen: Radley
Man of the match: Craig Nutt (Harlequins)
Benefits of first-time home buyers’ scheme
Priority access to new homes from participating developers
Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
Flexible payment plans from developers
Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
2.0
Director: S Shankar
Producer: Lyca Productions; presented by Dharma Films
Cast: Rajnikanth, Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Sudhanshu Pandey
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Financial considerations before buying a property
Buyers should try to pay as much in cash as possible for a property, limiting the mortgage value to as little as they can afford. This means they not only pay less in interest but their monthly costs are also reduced. Ideally, the monthly mortgage payment should not exceed 20 per cent of the purchaser’s total household income, says Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching.
“If it’s a rental property, plan for the property to have periods when it does not have a tenant. Ensure you have enough cash set aside to pay the mortgage and other costs during these periods, ideally at least six months,” she says.
Also, shop around for the best mortgage interest rate. Understand the terms and conditions, especially what happens after any introductory periods, Ms Glynn adds.
Using a good mortgage broker is worth the investment to obtain the best rate available for a buyer’s needs and circumstances. A good mortgage broker will help the buyer understand the terms and conditions of the mortgage and make the purchasing process efficient and easier.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The years Ramadan fell in MayGothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
HIJRA
Starring: Lamar Faden, Khairiah Nathmy, Nawaf Al-Dhufairy
Director: Shahad Ameen
Rating: 3/5
Pharaoh’s curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
Landfill in numbers
• Landfill gas is composed of 50 per cent methane
• Methane is 28 times more harmful than Co2 in terms of global warming
• 11 million total tonnes of waste are being generated annually in Abu Dhabi
• 18,000 tonnes per year of hazardous and medical waste is produced in Abu Dhabi emirate per year
• 20,000 litres of cooking oil produced in Abu Dhabi’s cafeterias and restaurants every day is thrown away
• 50 per cent of Abu Dhabi’s waste is from construction and demolition
Titanium Escrow profile
Started: December 2016
Founder: Ibrahim Kamalmaz
Based: UAE
Sector: Finance / legal
Size: 3 employees, pre-revenue
Stage: Early stage
Investors: Founder’s friends and Family
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League final:
Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
Bio:
Favourite Quote: Prophet Mohammad’s quotes There is reward for kindness to every living thing and A good man treats women with honour
Favourite Hobby: Serving poor people
Favourite Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Favourite food: Fish and vegetables
Favourite place to visit: London
The biog
Job: Fitness entrepreneur, body-builder and trainer
Favourite superhero: Batman
Favourite quote: We must become the change we want to see, by Mahatma Gandhi.
Favourite car: Lamborghini
McIlroy’s recent struggles
Last six stroke-play events (First round score in brackets)
Arnold Palmer Invitational Tied for 4th (74)
The US Masters Tied for 7th (72)
The Players Championship Tied for 35th (73)
US Open Missed the cut (78)
Travellers Championship Tied for 17th (67)
Irish Open Missed the cut (72)
STAY%2C%20DAUGHTER
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAuthor%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EYasmin%20Azad%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EPublisher%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESwift%20Press%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAvailable%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENow%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Volvo ES90 Specs
Engine: Electric single motor (96kW), twin motor (106kW) and twin motor performance (106kW)
Power: 333hp, 449hp, 680hp
Torque: 480Nm, 670Nm, 870Nm
On sale: Later in 2025 or early 2026, depending on region
Price: Exact regional pricing TBA