This month, we have books and events coming in September 2026, as well as one we missed from the end of August.
Title Missed from the End of August:
From the publisher:
Born into an aristocratic Damascene family in about 1887, Fakhri al-Barudi was a household name in Syria, universally acclaimed as one of the country’s founding fathers and a leading figure in the country’s struggle for independence from French rule during the 1920s. A politician, he grew up in a world of privilege but also witnessed the decline of Ottoman rule and the rise of Arab nationalism.
His memoirs, originally published in Arabic in 1951, provide a vivid account of social life in Ottoman Damascus during the early twentieth century, offering a unique perspective onto the city’s cultural, political, and intellectual landscape. They capture the complexities of Damascus society, from the rigid class structures and Ottoman influence to the burgeoning nationalist movements that sought to redefine Arab identity. They also delve into the political upheavals of the time, particularly the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which restored the Ottoman constitution and briefly promised reform and equality. Al-Barudi recounts the excitement and uncertainty that followed the coup, as well as the growing tensions between Arab nationalists and Ottoman authorities.
Drawing on both private papers and published sources, Sami Moubayed’s authoritative epilogue takes up al-Barudi’s life in Syrian politics from where the memoirs leave off, through to al-Barudi’s death in 1966. Here again al-Barudi is a central figure in the political history of Syria, and his biography sheds fascinating light on the social and political dynamics that continue to shape Syria to this day, especially following the fall of the Assad regime in 2024.
September:
From the publisher:
Two Palestinian teenagers discover secrets that change all they thought they knew about their family histories—and their own futures.
Farida is a talented young painter who recreates European masterpieces under the patronizing eye of a Parisian art dealer. Mazen just arrived in France to hunt for a lost family heirloom. When the two meet during a chance encounter at the Louvre, they discover that both their grandmothers fled Palestine during the Nakba in 1948. Drawn to one another, Mazen and Farida begin to piece together their past, but a shadowy ring of art forgers has other plans for Farida. Will she discover the truth before it’s too late?
Exploring what it means to live in diaspora, Hooda Shawa’s US debut moves from Paris to Haifa, from Aleppo to Tangier, conjuring the jewel tones of the Mediterranean and the bittersweet taste of memory.
Also read: Palestinian Sittis and the Inheritance of Memories, a conversation with Hooda Shawa
From the publisher:
A brother and sister leave their mountain village carrying little more than memory, hope, and each other.
When Rashid and Rayya journey from the rugged highlands of Oman to the bustling port city of Muscat, they leave behind everything they have ever known. Far from home, they must navigate a world shaped by labour, power, and survival, while holding on to the land, traditions, and memories that continue to define them.
Winner of the 2025 Bait Alghasham DarArab International Translation Prize, The Garden We Carry is a luminous translated Arabic novel by acclaimed Omani writer Bushra Khalfan. Through the story of two ordinary lives, Khalfan explores migration, belonging, family, and the enduring bond between people and place.
Rich in atmosphere and emotional depth, this unforgettable novel captures a changing Oman while asking timeless questions about home, identity, and what we carry with us when we leave everything behind.
Beautifully translated by Luke Leafgren, The Garden We Carry introduces English-language readers to one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Omani literature.
From the publisher:
In the summer of 1965, a journalist newly released from prison finds himself stranded at the sprawling site of the Aswan High Dam, the flagship project of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s modern Egypt. Amid oppressive heat, unreliable transport, a mysterious epidemic, and the oppressive gaze of state surveillance, he confronts a dramatic transformation underway: villages erased, communities displaced, and a rich past disappearing beneath the waters of a new lake. As the journalist journeys south along the Nile, his observations illuminate a key moment in Cold War politics and a society wrestling with the promises and perils of progress.
Originally published in Arabic in 1974, Star of August is a masterwork by Sonallah Ibrahim—a writer who lived through these upheavals firsthand—and a timeless exploration of ideology, power, and the price of change.
The Foreigners’ Quarter, by Hassanine Ben Ammou, tr. William Granara (Interlink Books, September 22, 2026)
When young Venetian ne’er-do-well Antonio is stricken with love at first sight of the aristocratic Maria, his schemes to win her affections are met with disdainful rejection. Days later, the two are kidnapped by pirates during Carnival celebrations and hauled onto a ship headed to the coast of Tunisia and sold to slave traders. Thus begins their new life as foreign captives (‘iluj) in mid-15th century Tunisia, but on drastically divergent trajectories.
With her natural beauty and noble breeding, Maria finds herself in the royal harem where she will rise as queen consort and mother to two sultans. Antonio drifts from prison to vagabondage, surviving through the kindness of friends and patrons despite his obsessive and delusory love for Maria that leads to failures in business, addiction, and eventual madness.
Hasanein Ben Ammou’s The Foreigners’ Quarter is the saga of a new quarter of late-medieval Tunis medina as site of a European migration of captives, political and religious exiles, pirates, soldiers, diplomats and merchants who navigate their way to a new world that juggles religious and ethnic tolerance, financial opportunities, and the Hafsid dynasty’s battles with rival kinsmen, rebellious tribesmen, and external enemies.
Against the pairing of Antonio and Maria as would-be lovers in the vein of the Arabian romantic legend of Majnun Layla, The Foreigners’ Quarter is a novel that draws from the real-life history of the Mediterranean world rocked by the Spanish Reconquest and the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula on the one hand, and the subsequent rise of Christian-Ottoman rivalries on the other.
By evoking actual events, places and characters, Ben Amou crafts a novel cast in the shadow of the Andalusian “myth of inter-faith utopia” to tell the story of hostility and the sharing of a common life that foresees a modern, multi-ethnic Mediterranean Tunisian identity and nation.
Notable Events
The celebration of a new publishing venture: Songs for Fairuz, a ten book series with Black Ocean Press, featuring poetry translated into English by Arab women writers.
This program will feature reading and discussion from the first book in the series, I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar, by Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmed Jabr, translated by HSI poet and translator Jennifer Jean and Iraqi translator Wadaq Qais.
Copies will be available for purchase. Live music will be provided by Layan Hallawi. For more information.
The Center for the Art of Translation presents the seventh annual Day of Translation in partnership with The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. Featuring Zeina G. Halabi, a writer, editor, and scholar of modern Arabic literature, and the Arabic editor of Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal. Also, Katharine Halls, a multi-award-winning Arabic-to-English translator from Cardiff, Wales. She has translated books by Sara Abou Ghazal, Shady Lewis, Ahmed Naji, and Adania Shibli.
Panels are free, open to the public, and will be livestreamed. Registration is required for in-person attendance and to access the livestream. Seating is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-seated basis.
Date & Time: Saturday, September 26, from 1:00 p.m.
Venue: Ertuğrul Hall, B1F, Tokyo Camii Annex
Speakers: Kaoru Yamamoto (Moderator) | Mari Oka | Mana Sato | Mori Kaneko
No registration required, free admission
In the first of three conversations, translator Sawad Hussain and bookseller Alison Henry discuss what they see as the biggest successes and positive shifts in the sector in recent years, and what has driven them. They’ll ask: how have developments in literary translation changed the way booksellers buy and sell books? How have transformations in the way books are promoted and consumed impacted what and how translators translate? And what would translators and booksellers need to do over the coming years to create sustainable growth in sales of literary translation?
There’s also a translation slam chaired by Nashwa Nasreldin.