Fiction

The wall of the old candy factory is covered with children's drawings, unreadable ads and various 25 January graffiti. In front of the wall stands a girl, Afaf. She takes a black spray bottle out of a plastic bag and writes a word.

Amwaj tells the story of a young Ibrahim who was born and raised in Kirkuk to a family of Sunni Arab farmers and landowners.

A group of disparate individuals find themselves together, each on a personal mission to summit Kilimanjaro.

Suad Amiry traces the lives of individual members of Palestinian families and, through them, the histories of both Palestine and the émigré Palestinian community in other countries of the Middle East.

Terrorists are nothing new. 

The year is 1368 and Granada, capital of the Moors in Spain, is under threat from violent extremists. Enter Abu Abdallah, the penniless globetrotter who has had wives and concubines on three continents and is still searching for the right woman, and his West African slave Sinan, the one with the brawn, the brains, the looks – and the demons in his past.

Omar is an orphaned Palestinian born into chaos and driven by forces beyond his control to find his place in the world. He has only one thing to hold on to: a love that propels him forward.

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION 

Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love.

It's the dawn of the 20th Century, and Britain's glittering Empire extends far and wide, full of the dangerously seductive promise of untapped riches.

Reem is a thoughtful young girl who enjoys life and deeply loves spending time with her parents. But fate has many surprises in store for her and her beloved mother passes away. 

Written by a diasporic Iraqi poet, this work deals with the physical presence of everyday objects in our lives and the intensity they hold.

A collection of poems with themes of loss and nostalgia, authored by one of the most highly-regarded poetic voices from Tunisia.

Composed by the winner of the prestigious Griffin Prize for Poetry 2013, the poems in this collection revolve around the competing forces of life and death. 

A Sudanese writer begins to suspect that one of his most idiosyncratic characters from a recent novel resembles – in an uncanny, terrifying way – a real person he has never met.

With poignancy and humor, Al-Maria shares the struggles of being raised by an American mother and Bedouin father while shuttling between homes in the Pacific Northwest and the Middle East.

A princess from Sharjah in the UAE writes stories about women who live and love in the Middle East. These candid, moving and inspirational tales will resonate with readers around the world.

Heartbreaking and moving, Bitter Almonds is about displacement and exile, family duty and honour, and the universal feelings of love and loss. This is a book to break your heart, but it is also a book of hope and admiration at the resilience of the human spirit.

Amidst the violence rippling across the Middle East, a wealthy businessman is visited by an oracle and is given news that shakes the very foundations of his existence. 

Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure, and sends her back home with her baby son, José. 

Oblivious to the invasions, massacres and religious fanaticism that characterise the 15th century, a young girl falls in love with a noble Arabian tribal leader.

A Sudanese writer begins to suspect that one of his most idiosyncratic characters from a recent novel resembles – in an uncanny and terrifying way – a real person he has never met.  

Where Pigeons Don't Fly follows the story of Fahd, a young boy growing up in Saudi Arabia. Fahd's childhood is overshadowed by his father's involvement in the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca. 

A young girl, renamed Amerika in honour of the US role in the liberation of Kuwait, finds her name has become a barometer of her country's growing hostility towards the West. A middle-aged man dying from cancer looks back on his extramarital affairs and the abiding forgiveness of his wife.

On June 16, 1957, a shoot-out in a village church in northern Lebanon leaves two dozen people dead. In the aftermath of the massacre, the town is rent in two: the Al-Ramis in the north and their rivals, the Al-Samaeenis, in the south. But lives once so closely intertwined cannot easily be divided. Neighbors turn into enemies, and husbands and wives are forced to choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to their clan.

A highly original novel by one of Mexico's most important storytellers, Como agua para chocolate is written in the style of the serialized novels so popular in the nineteenth century. Each chapter starts with a traditional northern Mexican recipe. In effect, cooking is the exclusive means of expression open to the female protagonist, who doesn't entirely conform to the limited role that both society and her family have given her.

As he prepares to leave for work one morning, Youssef al-Firsiwi finds a mysterious letter under his door. In a single devastating line he learns that his only son, Yacine, whom he believed to be studying engineering in Paris, has been killed in Afghanistan fighting with the Islamist resistance.

When a luxurious residence is built on the Jeddah waterfront not far from young Tariq’s neighborhood, Tariq and his friends dream of employment in the palace to escape their world of petty crime and unrelenting cruelty. But the debauched palace is ruled over by the ruthless Master whose influence in the city is as wide as it is pernicious.

A city - known for its light-heartedness, vibrancy and capacity for fun - is ripped apart by war.

A young man - full of the vim, vigour and desires of youth - refuses to allow his spirit to be dampened . . .

Is he dead?

Medina, Saudi Arabia. A young man, Malek, has been brutally attacked for being of the 'wrong' race.

Malek's lover, Leen, waits by his bedside and reflects on their relationship and her life as an unmarried, childless woman. All around her are voices of judgment and concern; in the twenty-first century it is still unforgivable, and dangerous, for a Saudi woman to enter into a relationship with a black man. In the distance US planes hover over Iraq, primed to embark on yet another senseless conflict.

Nada is no stranger to protest. She is five years old when her French mother takes her to visit her Egyptian father, a political activist with a passing resemblance to President Nasser, in prison. When he returns home five years later, a changed man, their little family begins to fracture and eventually Nada's mother moves back to Paris. Through her teenage years Nada is surrounded by the language of protest - 'anarchism', 'Trotskyism', 'communism' - and, one summer in Paris, she discovers the '68 movement and her first love. And how to slam doors in anger.

 BQFP Fiction is home to a list of distinguished authors from the Middle East