With 2025 IPAF Winner Mohamed Samir Nada
Mohamed Samir Nada talks about his dystopian novel Prayer of Anxiety, which won the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Interviews
‘A Magical Dimension’
A prize-winning novel about family tension is set during a period of tumult in Tunisia.
In Conversation: On the New Literature Podcast MAKTOOB
The new podcast MAKTOOB: Arabic Stories in English is coming soon from Komet Kashakeel. You can find a trailer with more about the six-episode podcast, which covers a diversity of books from across the region, on YouTube and Spotify. Here, co-hosts Lauren Pepperell and Anam Zafar talk about how it came about, highlights from the series, and what we might expect from a season two.
Haneen al-Sayegh on Writing Women and Collective Solidarity
International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted writer Haneen Al-Sayegh talks with ArabLit about the novel that “began as an intimate letter” to her daughter, the collective solidarity of women, and how “many depictions of Arab women in literature remain confined to reductive tropes: the broken, submissive woman pleading for freedom or awaiting salvation.”
Ala Hlehel On Power, Place, and the Palestinian Novel
In this conversation with ArabLit, Ala Hlehel talks about coming-of-age as a writer in a remote mountain village, the literary spaces that nurture bold writing, and the quiet radicalism of a woman singing with Umm Kulthum in her kitchen.
New on Bulaq: Arab Women’s Memoirs
In this episode, author, commentator and human rights advocate Khaled Mansour joins us to talk about how reading Arab women’s memoirs can help one gain a new understanding of the region’s collective history.
From the IPAF Shortlist to the Final Six
“I was hoping I would see some more surprises, books that would somehow stick out, astonish me somehow. I know such books exist, but they do not always seem to be the ones that get to be submitted to IPAF.”
‘Lonely as a Crowded Room’
‘Lonely as a Crowded Room’: Wit, Love, Death and Everything in Between By Alia H. Salim Some novels grip you from the first page, not because they fit into […]
It’s Publication Day for ‘Poppy Seeds: Poetry from Gazan Youth’
It’s publication day for Poppy Seeds: Poetry from Gazan Youth, a new collection out from young people’s publication Naya Magazine. Here, we talk with co-editor Akshay Maheshwari about the idea behind […]