Satin Rouge
Lilia, a gorgeous “woman of a certain age,” has suppressed her own desires all her life. When her daughter falls for a cabaret musician, Lilia goes to the nightclub to confront the man. Once there, however, she finds herself drawn to the shady, tantalizing world of the cabaret, which opens up a whole new universe to her that she is powerless to resist.
Umm Kulthum, A Voice Like Egypt
She had the musicality of Ella Fitzgerald, the public presence of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis Presley. Her name was Umm Kulthum, and she became a powerful symbol, first of the aspirations of her country, Egypt, and then of the entire Arab world.
Lemon Tree
Salma, a Palestinian widow living in the West Bank, is awakened by the grating sound of sawing emanating from her carefully tended lemon grove. …Planted by her father over fifty years ago, Salma weeps bitter tears when informed that her beloved grove would be decimated because of the threat they pose to her new neighbors. The lemon trees are her only source of income. She is not about to let this happen without a fight and embarks on a battle that would be waged in court with words instead of weapons and bloodshed.
Caramel
In Beirut, five women meet regularly in a beauty salon, a colorful and sensual microcosm of the city where several generations come into contact, talk and confide in each other. Layale loves Rabih, but Rabih is married. Nisrine is Muslim and her forthcoming marriage poses a problem: she is no longer a virgin. Rima is tormented by her attraction to women and especially to this lovely client with long hair. Jamale is refusing to grow old. Rose has sacrificed her life to take care of her elderly sister. In the salon, their intimate and liberated conversations revolve around men, sex and motherhood, between haircuts and sugar waxing with caramel.
The Map of Love
by Ahdaf Soueif
A Finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize, “The Map of Love” spans three continents and the course of a century as it traces a transcendent cross-cultural love affair back to its dramatic precursor generations earlier.
Gate of the Sun
Elias Khoury; Translated by Humphrey Davies
Drawing on the stories he gathered from refugee camps over the course of many years, Elias Khoury’s epic novel Gate of the Sun has been called the first magnum opus of the Palestinian saga.
Yunes, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. Keeping vigil at the old man’s bedside is his spiritual son, Khalil, who nurses Yunes, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, Khalil relates the story of Palestinian exile while also recalling Yunes’s own extraordinary life and his love for his wife, whom he meets secretly over the years at Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun.
Naguib Mahfouz
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1988
Mahfouz is the author of no fewer than thirty novels, more than a hundred short stories, and more than two hundred articles.
Half of his novels have been made into films which have circulated throughout the Arabic-speaking world. In Egypt, each new publication is regarded as a major cultural event and his name is inevitably among the first mentioned in any literary discussion from Gibraltar to the Gulf.
Hanan Al-Shaykh is a Lebanese novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and playwright. Hanan has published numerous novels and short stories and is considered a major force in Arabic Literature. She is one of the leading contemporary women writers in the Arab world and has established critical success of her books in the United States and E urope. Her novels, which are all written in Arabic, have been translated into English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, Italian, Korean, Spanish, and Polish.
Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese journalist and novelist, whose native language was Arabic but who writes in French. Most of Maalouf’s books have a historical setting, and like Umberto Eco, Orhan Pamuk, and Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Maalouf mixes fascinating historical facts with fantasy and philosophical ideas.
In an interview Maalouf has said that his role as a writer is to create “positive myths”. Maalouf’s works, written with the skill of a master storyteller, offer a sensitive view of the values and attitudes of different cultures in the Middle East, Africa and Mediterranean world.
Granada – a Novel
by Radwa Ashour
Author Radwa Ashour is an Egyptian novelist. Translator William Granara is professor of Arabic at Harvard University.
A powerful novel of life in the mixed culture that existed in Southern Spain before the expulsion of the Arabs and Jews.
