Arab Historical Fiction

What does it take to radically alter the course of someone’s life? In the case of Emad Almasry, an archeologist with the Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities, it took a clay jar. Its discovery, under Egypt’s oldest mosque, set in motion a series of events that threatened the very existence of Egypt’s Coptic community. Emad very quickly learns that the only way he could keep the hammer blow from falling was to dig deep into the origins of Islam. Will he be able to force the past to yield its secrets? Would he have the courage to follow the evidence wherever it leads? What happens when ...

Palestine, 1948. Half a million Palestinians are forced from their homes. A mother clutches her six-month-old son as Israeli soldiers march through the village of Ein Hod. In a split second, her son is snatched from her arms and the fate of the Abulheja family is changed forever. Forced into a refugee camp in Jenin and exiled from the ancient village that is their lifeblood, the family struggles to rebuild their world.

Based on the true story of two Jaffa teenagers, Mother of Strangers follows the daily lives of Subhi, a fifteen-year-old mechanic, and Shams, the thirteen-year-old student he hopes to marry one day. In this prosperous and cosmopolitan port city, with its bustling markets, cinemas, and cafés on the hills overlooking the Mediter­ranean Sea, we meet many other unforgettable charac­ters as well....

Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon's fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans.

A husband’s search for his wife’s lover, lost amid the turbulence of the Yom Kippur War, is the heart of this dreamlike novel. Through five different perspectives, Yehoshua explores the realities and consequences of the affair and the search, laying bare deep-rooted tensions within family, between generations, between Jews and Arabs.

الشجاعة والخوف والمغامرة،الحياة القديمة،اليهودي القادم من بعيد يلتقي بطلة الرواية على قمم الحجاز ،ثم سجل للفقر والسفر والبعد والوجوه الغريبة ،شخصيات قليلة،ولكن لا تنسى في رواية اليهودي والفتاة العربية. رواية غنية بالأحداث والمآسي، فمن السراة إلى دمشق،في رحلة بحرية طريفة إلى أعماق العالم الأوروبي،إيطاليا وألمانيا،ومراكز البحوث العلمية،ولقاءات الثقافة،في حوار مع الصهاينة،والحياة في ظل عجوز إيطالية متدينة.أحداث ركبها الراوي وحاور حولها الصهاينة،إنها نثر بالفن والتاريخ والأفكار.

رواية من النوع التاريخي بطلها المناضل علي بن غذاهم الذي قاد ثورة سلمية في تونس سنة 1864 ضد مضاعفة المجبى قائلا: "نحن طلاب حق، وثرنا لرفع مظلمة".