Forthcoming May 2026: Two Graphic Novels, Powerful Nonfiction
As publication dates often slip — and new books surface — we try to have a glance at what’s really (to the best of our knowledge) coming in translation from Arabic at the start of each month. If you have more books to add, please let us know.
Welcome to Hell: From the West Bank to Gaza, by Mohammad Sabaaneh (Street Noise Books, May 5 2026)
From the publisher:
This powerful graphic novel sheds light on the reality of life in both the West Bank and Gaza during this terrifying time. Told from the perspective of the author’s brother’s experience in prison and that of those in Gaza struggling to survive displacement, starvation, and attack.
In October of 2023, Sabaaneh went on a tour in Europe to promote his book about life under occupation in Palestine. Whether a Palestinian is inside a detention center or in any city or village, they are all in a big prison. The book ends with one message: ‘we will not leave.’ Upon his return to Palestine, he was trapped within the walls of his home—unable to see his aging parents, or his brother, who was locked away in an Israeli detention center.
So begins this vital story of struggle and survival.
Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life, by Samar Yazbek, translated by Leri Price (Fitzcarraldo Editions, May 21 2026)
From the publisher:
In the year following 7 October 2023, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each of them about their experiences of that day and the months of destruction and displacement that followed. From these encounters comes Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life, a selection of twenty-six testimonies from ordinary civilians aged thirteen to sixty-five, whose lives have been irrevocably altered by what may one day be remembered as one of the most savage military offensives of our time. Adapted from warning flyers dropped moments before a bombing, the book’s title captures the impossible reality of life for Gazans. That reality is laid bare in accounts marked by unimaginable loss – homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated – and mechanisms of cruelty that defy comprehension. In gathering these testimonies, Yazbek brings into focus the human lives behind the headlines, and the survivors’ determination, even amid devastation, to speak and to be heard.
From ArabLit:
On Redefining Collective Memory, In Conversation: Between Samar Yazbek and Olivia Snaije
Translated from French:
Farewell Tangier, by Salma El Moumni, translated by Lynn E. Palermo (Seagull Books, May 6 2026)
From the publisher:
For Alia, being a teenager in Tangier means constantly facing a gauntlet of unwanted encounters by men in the streets who look her over, grab her, or make comments about her body. At night, in the privacy of her bedroom, Alia begins to take photos of her body in order to understand what those men see when they look at her, becoming her own voyeur. When Alia’s photos somehow end up on the internet, she decides to flee the country, as the photos violate Moroccan law. She seeks refuge in Lyon, France, but is unable to escape the past.
Farewell Tangier is a searing exploration of the male gaze and its potential to shatter a young woman’s life, exploring themes of desire, dissociation, and exile. It is both a feminist critique of the policing of female bodies and an affecting narrative of one young woman’s struggle with her identity.
The End of the Arab of the Future: A Youth in the Middle East, by Riad Sattouf, translated by Sam Taylor (Fantagraphics, May 19 2026)
Riad is a teenager growing up in the French region of Brittany, where he lives with his mother and brother and attends high school in Rennes. But his adolescence is anything but typical. Born to a Syrian father and a French mother, Riad spent much of his early childhood in Libya, rural Syria, and France—moving through contrasting worlds, political ideologies, and daily absurdities. Years earlier, his father—charismatic, authoritarian, and obsessed with dictators and with building a utopian Arab society—abducted Riad’s second younger brother, Fadi, and returned to Syria, leaving behind a fractured family.
At 14, Riad navigates puberty, isolation, and the pressures of French society, while haunted by the absence of his father and brother, and the sadness of his mother. He turns to books, heavy metal, and drawing as refuge. The tone is darkly comic and sharply observant, capturing both the universal pains of adolescence and the surreal contradictions of the 1990s. Blending personal story and social commentary, this standalone volume offers a biting, poignant portrait of a young man coming of age in a world that feels both familiar and foreign.
The End of the Arab of the Future is the first book in a two-volume series that concludes the critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novel begun in Arab of the Future.