Arabic Lit In Translation: Forthcoming in 2024

This is a partial list based on canvassing publishers and translators. If you have something to add, please let us know in the comments or at info@arablit.org.

January

Strangers in Light Coats: Selected Poems, 2014–2020, by Ghassan Zaqtan, tr. Robin Moger (Seagull Books)

From the publisher:

Ghassan Zaqtan is not only one of the most significant Palestinian poets at work today, but one of the most important poets writing in Arabic. Since the publication of his first collection in 1980, Zaqtan’s presence as a poet has evolved with the same branching and cumulative complexity as his poems—an invisible system of roots insistently pushing through the impacted soil of political and national narratives.

Strangers in Light Coats is the third collection of Zaqtan’s poetry to appear in English. It brings together poems written between 2014 and 2020 drawn from four volumes of poetry. Catching and holding the smallest particles of observation and experience in their gravity, the poems sprout and grow as though compelled, a trance of process in which fable, myth, and elegy take form only to fall apart and reconfigure, each line picked apart by the next and brought into the new body.

An Old Carriage with Curtains, by Ghassan Zaqtan, tr. Samuel Wilder (Seagull Books)

The third book in a beautiful trilogy. From the publisher:

An Old Carriage with Curtains is the third and final book in a masterful trilogy of novels encompassing the history of the people of the Palestinian village of Zakariyya. The novels trace the wandering trajectories and inner lives of characters connected to this village across decades, as well as the vicissitudes of historical change and displacement in the land. Through the return of a middle-aged man to the site of an ancient monastery in the hills near Jericho that he once visited as a boy, the incredibly vivid and surprising stories of Hind, a stage actress and brilliant storyteller, the stories of tortuous routes of checkpoints and bureaucratic blockages, and decades of Occupation, Zaqtan creates a narrative of personal reckoning and reflection.

The vectors of memory and historical reflection interweave in this dreamlike narrative, which delivers a singularly powerful depiction of subjective and collective experience in the face of devastating and sweeping historical change.

February

Where the Wind Calls Home, by Samar Yazbek, tr. Leri Price (World Editions)

From the publisher:

Ali, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian army, lies on the ground beneath a tree. He sees a body being lowered into a hole—is this his funeral? There was that sudden explosion, wasn’t there … While trying to understand the extend of the damage, Ali works his way closer to the tree. His ultimate desire is to fly up to one of its branches, to safety.

Through rich vignettes of Ali’s memories, we uncover the hardships of his traditional Syrian Alawite village, but also the richness and beauty of its cultural and religious heritage. Yazbek here explores the secrets of the Alawite faith and its relationship to nature and the elements in a tight poetic novel dense with life and hope and love.

The Djinn’s Apple, by Djamila Morani, tr. Sawad Hussain (Neem Tree Press)

From the publisher:

Winner of an English PEN Translates Award.

Historical fiction meets crime fiction in The Djinn’s Apple, an award-winning YA murder mystery set in the Abbasid period—the golden age of Baghdad.

A ruthless murder. A magical herb. A mysterious manuscript.

When Nardeen’s home is stormed by angry men frantically in search of something—or someone—she is the only one who manages to escape. And after the rest of her family is left behind and murdered, Nardeen sets out on an unyielding mission to bring her family’s killers to justice, regardless of the cost…

Full of mystery and mayhem, The Djinn’s Apple is perfect for fans of Arabian Nights, City of Brass, and The Wrath and the Dawn.

Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets, ed. Omar Berrada and Sarah Riggs (Litmus Press)

From the publisher:

A trilingual experimental collection bringing together an impressive array of contemporary Arab poets and literary translators in and across Arabic, English, and French languages.

ANOTHER ROOM TO LIVE IN is an archive of encounter: a multilingual conversation between fifteen poet-translators, connected through friendship, correspondence, and cross-diasporic gatherings. With work in English, Arabic, and French, the collection moves beyond both language and nation-state, investing instead in transcontinental dreamspaces. Here, translation practices collaboratively transform the poems and reflect the poets’ own experiences of “living” in multiple languages. Complicating any flat conception of identity, the poems presented here seek to revisit and challenge foundational narratives, to rework mythologies, and to do all this through a cross-generational process of translation as poetic communion.

Contributors include: Etel Adnan, Hoda Adra, Sinan Antoon, Mirene Arsanios, Omar Berrada, Sara Elkamel, Soukaina Habiballah, Marilyn Hacker, Golan Haji, Kadhim Jihad Hassan, Pierre Joris, Mona Kareem, Souad Labbize, Rachida Madani, Alisha Mascarenhas, Iman Mersal, Aya Nabih, Sarah Riggs, Yasmine Seale, Cole Swensen, Habib Tengour, and Sam Wilder.

March

Before the Queen Falls Asleep, by Huzama Habayeb, tr. Kay Heikennen (MacLehose)  

From the publisher:

Born a girl to parents who expected a boy, Jihad grows up treated like the eldest son, wearing boy’s clothing and sharing the financial burden of head of the household with her father.

Now middle-aged, each night Jihad tells her daughter a story from her life. As Malika prepares to leave home to attend university abroad, her mother revisits the past of their Palestinian family, tenderly describing their life in exile in Kuwait and her own experiences of love and loss as she grows up.

Huzama Habayeb weaves a richly observed and affectionate portrait of a Palestinian family displaced from their homeland, exploring with humour and poise the love and betrayal that pursues Jihad and her family from Kuwait to Jordan to Dubai. This is a novel whose words will resound long after you finish the final page.

1970: The Last Days, by Sonallah Ibrahim, tr. Eleanor Ellis

From the publisher:

In 1959, at the age of twenty-two, Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim was imprisoned by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime. Over the following five years in prison in Egypt’s Western Desert, Ibrahim kept diaries that he smuggled out on cigarette papers.

In this novel, Ibrahim takes up Nasser as a fictional character tied tightly to real events, offering a window into his daily life in his final years. Ibrahim follows Nasser during the War of Attrition and the aftermath of the 1967 war with Israel and looks back on the events of the previous decades. He also chronicles Nasser at his most vulnerable, detailing a more private set of Nasser’s setbacks and defeats: the daily routines of a diabetic suffering from heart trouble in the months before his death.

Political events as well as social and economic transformations are narrated through newspaper clippings and archival fragments, painting a portrait of the decline of a man who was once larger than life.

From the publisher:

When the Egyptian architect Mukhtar arrives in Oman to oversee a building project, he finds it’s a bait-and-switch. Instead of drawing up building plans, he is trapped into doing back-breaking manual labour. As Mukhtar is forced from one demeaning job to the next, he pines for Houria, the love he left behind in the hopes of making enough money to support her. As he navigates the underbelly of the Omani economy, he and Houria exchange increasingly passionate messages. But reluctant to admit his failure, Mukhtar refuses to return until an unexpected turn of events makes the decision for him.    

Weaving together stories of migrant labourers in Oman with those of their loved ones back home, The Last Crossing beautifully articulates its principal theme: the harsh realities that face migrants in Oman. The first Omani novel to focus on the lives of expatriate workers, this story brings to life their varied motivations and personalities. Al-Badri’s powerful tale of one man’s migration for love is a searing portrait of the realities that lie beneath the surface of Oman’s prosperous economy.

From the publisher:

Lost in Mecca is a powerful and heart-wrenching novel by Bothayna Al-Essa about loss and the search for meaning. The story follows a seven-year-old Kuwaiti boy who goes missing during the Hajj pilgrimage, introducing his parents to a darker side of Mecca. As they search for their child, the family uncovers painful truths about political and social realities that force them to confront their privilege. Through oscillating points of view, the novel exposes a world of crime that raises deeper questions about what justice means today and how our world determines the value of human life.

Lost in Mecca is a stunning work of contemporary Arabic literature for its exploration of the contemporary human condition in a thought-provoking and an unforgettable way.

Huddud’s House, by Fadi Azzam, tr. Ghada Alatrash

From the publisher:

How far is love willing to travel in search of its own lost voice?

When tyranny unleashes destructive forces that threaten to overwhelm a country, what are the effects on the lives and choices of ordinary humans? When citizens become inhabitants of a land of extremes, what do they do, to whom do they flee?

Shadowing the days of Syria’s Arab spring, Fadi Azzam’s epic novel, Huddud’s House—a haunting, contemporary novel rooted in the soil of Damascus, the oldest inhabited city in humanity—is a sprawling tale of love in time of war. Focusing on a quartet of characters torn between leaving and returning to Damascus, it follows intertwining stories of love and violence to their boundaries.

Azzam writes the spirit of resilience and resistance of the Syrian peoples. A saga on the dangers of ignoring threats or forgetting atrocities, he braves a long-distance search for his people’s voice, one that violence cannot silence.

April

The Screams of War: Selected Poems, by Akram Alkatreb, tr. Jonas Elbousty (Seagull Books)

From the publisher:

‘Those who believe in the currency of patience / Were burned out in the alleyway.’

The Screams of War is a visceral collection of poems that confront the realities of contemporary Syria. Akram Alkatreb’s verses capture the sense of the quotidian during war. His words, mere ‘murmurs engraved on stones’, long for and despair over an irrevocable past. At the heart of Alkatreb’s work lies a preoccupation with trauma and the profound burden of alienation that accompanies exile. Nascent memories are shrouded by the ‘scars of sleep’, and words find themselves nostalgic for destruction. The ubiquity of violence that Alkatreb channels into his poetry does not tolerate enclaves of innocence. The Screams of Waris an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a stark reminder of the harsh realities faced by those trapped in conflict.

The Tale of a Wall, by Nasser Abu Srour, tr. Luke Leafgren (Other Press)

From the publisher:

One of more than 5,000 Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons, Nasser Abu Srour serves a life sentence with no possibility of parole. From the Nakba to the disastrous consequences of the Oslo Accords, he explains with great acumen how the Intifada of the Stones (1987–1993) ultimately provided the only option for young Palestinians in refugee camps to infuse meaning into their lives, especially as they faced a constant threat of humiliation and manipulation by Israeli intelligence. This uprising leads to Abu Srour’s incarceration, after he was forced to confess, under torture, to the killing of a Shin Bet officer who recruited his cousin as an informant.
Within his cell, Abu Srour turns the Wall that has deprived him of his freedom into his interlocutor and the source of stability that allows him to survive a chaotic, hopeless existence.

This incredible literary device—and survival strategy—becomes particularly heartbreaking when falling in love causes Abu Srour to lose his grip on the Wall. Only by writing the story of his imprisonment and the story of his love does Abu Srour find his way back. In doing so, he has created a work of art that transcends the pain he endures while shining a glaring light on the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian situation.

Selamlik, by Khaled Alesmael, tr. Leri Price (World Editions)

From the publisher:

Furat, a Syrian in his early 20s, visits Sibki Park in Damascus, which serves as a gathering place for gay men from all over the city. He learns about the Hammams, secret meeting places for gays located throughout the old city. Inside these public baths, the air is thick with the scent of bay laurel soap, and naked men hide in the steam. Despite society, religion and regime disapproval, Furat finds the love he seeks just before being forced to flee as his world changes. Later on, Furat wakes up in a cold sweat at an asylum in the Swedish forest recalling a terrifying dream in which he was blindfolded and bound. Having seen the horrific clips of what extremists do to gays circulating on the internet, he begins to write about his experience while locked in the toilet. This is the story of Furat’s journey, along with that of other refugees, as they struggle against physical and economic challenges, migration laws, and deep-seated fears of loss, shame, and hatred. However, amid these difficulties also lie moments of passion and pleasure. Despite everything, Furat remains steadfast in his pursuit of love.

You can also read an excerpt on the World Editions website.

May

A Nose and Three Eyes, by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, tr. Jonathan Smolin (Hoopoe Fiction)

From the publisher:

It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man.

This other man is Dr Hashim Abdel-Latif, and while he is Amina’s first love, she is certainly not his. Also many years her senior, Hashim is well-known in polite circles for his adventures with women. A Nose and Three Eyes tells the story of Amina’s love affair with Hashim, and that of two other young women: Nagwa and Rahhab.

A Nose and Three Eyes is a story of female desire and sexual awakening, of love and infatuation, and of exploitation and despair. It quietly critiques the strictures put upon women by conservative social norms and expectations, while a subtle undercurrent of political censure was carefully aimed at the then Nasser regime. As such, it was both deeply controversial and wildly popular when first published in the 1960s. Still a household name, this novel, and its author, have stood the test of time and remain relevant and highly readable today.

At Rest in the Cherry Orchard, by Azher Jirjees, tr. Jonathan Wright (Banipal Books)

From the publisher:

Said Mardan flees Iraq when a colleague reports him for a joke about Saddam Hussein. He obtains asylum in Norway, learns the language, and becomes a postman. He marries his Norwegian language teacher Tona, even adopts her family name Jensen, and starts writing satirical stories in Norwegian for the Dagposten newspaper. However, he suffers throughout from all too vivid visitations from the ghost of his dead father, who was seized and killed by the regime before Said was born. “Where’s my grave?” his father always asks. Said’s life is upturned after his wife dies suddenly and he struggles with growing depression, headaches and cruel, haunting nightmares while painful and bloody memories keep rising to the fore, possibly aided by the ketamine he has been prescribed. He is urged by e-friend Abir to come immediately back to Baghdad, where a mass grave that probably contains his father’s remains is about to be opened. He goes back at short notice, only to find that Baghdad after the US invasion of 2003 is not the paradise he has been promised. On the contrary the city is exhausted and in the poisonous thrall of competing religious militias: he has to carry two sets of false IDs to oblige whichever one stops him. After a brutal encounter and finding himself in a large cemetery, he recalls fondly his old Norwegian neighbour Jakob who bought an orchard of cherry trees so that he could be laid to rest there, and according to old legend, reincarnate into a cherry tree. At the mass grave, Said takes a photo of his father – an incomplete father, that is, just a skull and some bones – to fill the empty frame he brought with him. After his shattering experiences, can he also find rest in a cherry orchard?

The Book Censor’s Library, by Bothayna Al-Essa, tr. Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless Books)

From the publisher:

A perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government.

The new book censor hasn’t slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish―allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture.

Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell’s 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.

In Gaddafi’s Clutches, by Ahmed Vall Dine, tr. Nicole Fares (Dar Arab)

From the publisher:

In Gaddafi’s Clutches: Aljazeera Caught in The Arab Spring, is a Prison Story of Aljazeera team of journalists, including the author, during the Arab spring in Libya in 2011. The author gives an unprecendented and personal account of his arrest and imprisonment by Gaddafi’s battalions. Once out of prison, Ahmed Vall Dine wrote this Memoir, which reports on the events of the war and details his experiences of capture, imprisonment and the politics that ultimately led to his release from prison. As an Al Jazeera journalist, the author had a front-row seat to the devastating events of the war and his firsthand experiences that add a unique and powerful perspective to the story. This book is not just a gripping tale of survival, but also a powerful commentary on the dangers and challenges faced by journalists reporting on conflicts, and the impact of war on both individuals and society. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the realities of Arab Spring, war and the resilience of the human spirit.

And in the second half of the year:

September

We Never Swim in the Same River Twice,  by Hassouna Mosbahi, tr William Hutchins (Syracuse University Press)

October

The River Knows My Name, by Mortada Gzar, tr. Luke Leafgren (Amazon Crossing)

November

Najwan Darwish Selected Poems 2014-2024, by Najwan Darwish, tr. Kareem James Abu-Zeid (Yale / Margellos)

Journals of Salt: Tunisian Women’s Writings on Experiences of Political Imprisonment edited by Haifa Zangana and translated by Katharine Halls and Nariman Yousef (Syracuse University Press)

Thunderbird: Book Three, by Sonia Nimr, tr M Lynx Qualey (University of Texas Press)

December