Ten books by Arab authors will be published in English in October, featuring literature from writers in countries including Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Qatar, as reported by ua.news based on coverage from The National.
New Novels Examining Life in Libya, Palestine, and Lebanon
October brings several translated and original novels exploring regional history and personal displacement. On October 6, the U.S. will see the release of Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table by Libyan writer Mohammed Alnaas, translated by Sawad Hussain and published after winning the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Also arriving October 6 is Palestinian writer Seraj Assi’s novel Red Flour, which depicts a protagonist resurrected in paradise recalling a besieged city’s massacre and a camp where a flour queue turns tragic. On October 15, the U.K. will receive Huda Shawa’s young adult novel The Necklace of Seven Souls, focusing on two Palestinian teenagers meeting at the Louvre who discover a connection between their grandmothers displaced during the Nakba. Lebanese author Rashid al-Daif’s historical novel Paving the Sea arrives the same day, recounting two students expelled for adding Darwin’s natural selection theory to their curriculum.
Poetry Collections and Essays Documenting Decades of Displacement
Nonfiction and verse additions begin October 13 with the first English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation, 1948-1968, translated by Tarif Khalidi with a foreword by historian Rashid Khalidi.
Zaina Arafat’s essay collection Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope releases in the U.S. on October 20 and the U.K. on October 22, examining family history, diaspora life, and ties to Palestine. On October 27, Iraqi poet Hana Ahmad Jabr will release her first solo English-language collection, I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar, translated by Jennifer Jean and Wadaq Qais, featuring prose poems about two decades of Iraqi violence, including the ISIS period.
Additional Releases from Beirut and the Arabian Gulf
Rounding out the October publishing slate are Lina Mounzer’s Janus City: The Many Faces of Beirut, combining personal memory with the city’s political history, alongside a new translation of May Ziade’s Musings of a Young Woman and a new edition of Abdulaziz al-Mahmoud’s Qatari historical novel The Corsair, which follows 19th-century tribal leader Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah in the Arabian Gulf.
This project joins recent poetry volumes such as Tayseer Abu Odeh and Sherah Bloor’s bilingual anthology You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine and Shamma Al Bastaki’s House To House, which uses oral narratives to document Dubai Creek communities from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Frequently Asked Questions About the October Book Releases
Which award-winning novel is being released in the United States in October?
Mohammed Alnaas’s novel Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table, which won the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, will be released in the United States on October 6, translated by Sawad Hussain.
Who translated Ghassan Kanafani’s newly published essay collection?
Tarif Khalidi translated Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation, 1948-1968, which features a foreword by historian Rashid Khalidi and publishes on October 13.
What subject does Abdulaziz al-Mahmoud’s historical novel address?
Abdulaziz al-Mahmoud’s novel The Corsair tells the story of seafaring tribal leader Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah in the Arabian Gulf at the beginning of the 19th century.
Worth a look