Fiction from Palestine, Yemen, Iraq and more – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

This list is incomplete and limited to what we have been told or discovered; If your book should be here, let us know in the comments or at [email protected].

No one knows their blood type, by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, translated by Hazem Jamjoum (Cleveland State University Poetry Center: October 1, 2024)

From the publisher:

No one knows their blood type is a novel about identity, connection and contradictory truths – about stories, secrets, songs, rumors and lies. On the day her father dies, Jumana makes a discovery about her blood type. Hers couldn’t have been inherited from her father, the father she sometimes longed for but always despised. This extraordinary novel about Palestine focuses its story not on the battlefield of history, but on how women live every day and the colonial context of their embodied lives. With humor and exciting inventiveness the question is asked: why are questions about love, friendship, parenthood and desire not central to our conversations about freedom and liberty? How would this transform our ideas about resistance?

Land of Sweetheart Deals, Through Wajdi Al-Ahdal, translated by William Hutchins (Dar Arab: October 7, 2024)

From the publisher:

Land of Sweetheart Deals is a tragic cautionary tale that examines government manipulation of print and social media, as well as the sexual exploitation and trafficking of youth in Yemen. The narrator of this novel presents himself as the reader’s expert guide across Yemen’s slipperiest slopes, physically and morally, and then plunges down them headfirst. This amiable narrator and protagonist, Mutahhar Fadl, is ordered by the editor of a pro-government newspaper to leave his normal routine in Sana’a and travel to Hodeida to report on the rape of a child. He soon realizes that his true mission is not to report on a trial, but to cover up the crime, because the accused rapist is a government loyalist. Mutahhar’s marriage, career and integrity are tested when the tempting benefits of his assignment lure him into becoming the novel’s antihero. As he tumbles down a dark rabbit hole with many twists and turns, you wonder if Mutahhar’s government leaders know him better than he does.

The Arabic title of the novel Ard al-Mu’amarat al-Sa’ida is a satirical play about the Roman name of South Arabia as ‘Arabia Felix’, fertile or happy Arabia. The novel’s chapters, which are numbered in reverse order, appear in chronological order, day by day.

The river knows my nameby Mortada Gzar, translated by Luke Leafgren (Amazon Crossing: October 8, 2024)

From the publisher:

Fifteen-year-old Charlotte grows restlessly into adulthood in the early twentieth century in Basra, Iraq. Charlotte, the daughter of a Seattle doctor and missionary, longs for an adventure of her own making. Just the thought of the steppes, hills, valleys and the winding river ignites Charlotte’s imagination and sends her compass into dances of flight.

Preferring the wonderful unknown over concern, Charlotte grabs copies of her father’s Gospels and a statue of the baby Jesus and runs away. Then, in a desperate search to find his daughter, Charlotte’s own father goes missing. With the help of two women – Sister Baghdadli of the mission and Shathra, a guide to the lost – Charlotte embarks on a quest steeped in local lore, as mysterious and wondrous as the river itself. In turn, Charlotte may find what she’s been looking for all along: the ability to claim her own identity.

In this rich and compelling novel, Mortada Gzar explores the power of faith, the urge to escape, and the excitement of self-discovery.

Arabian Hero: Oral Poetry and Narrative Tradition from Northern Arabiaby Shāyiʿ al-Amsaḥ, edited and translated by Marcel Kurpershoek (Library of Arabic Literature: October 22, 2024)

From the publisher:

The semi-legendary Shāyiʿ al-Amsaḥ, an epic hero and poet, was a prominent ancestor of the Shammar tribal confederation spanning the Great Nafūd Desert on the northern Arabian Peninsula. Shāyiʿ’s corpus of extant poems is preserved in tales of his chivalric exploits that have been orally transmitted for centuries. In this book, Marcel Kurpershoek vividly translates the actions and verses of this compelling poet, based on recordings of reciters from the late twentieth century, a testament to Shāyiʿ’s fame as an embodiment of Bedouin virtue, courage, cunning and generosity.

Born with one eye, Shāyiʿ presents himself as unattractive and unassuming, only to reveal the strength, wit and cunning of a hero. In a number of stories he is shown hiding his identity, disguised as an impoverished Bedouin or riding a camel deliberately made mangy and weak. In Bedouin oral culture, the epic cycle of Shāyiʿ al-Amsaḥ delights and instructs listeners through the unmasking of false appearances and the revelation of the hero’s true character.

Translated into English for the first time, these captivating stories and poems tell of perilous journeys through the desert, warlike exploits, chivalric behavior and its opposite, feats of hospitality that defy belief, and convey some wisdom from the Bedouin handbook for survive, making this collection a colorful compendium of the mores and customs of the tribes of Northern Arabia.