Art & Culture

The Best Newly Translated Arabic Books to Read This Summer

BYMille Team

May 12, 2026

There are beach reads, and then there are books that completely alter the temperature of your summer. The kind you start on a sun lounger in the late afternoon and suddenly find yourself still reading three hours later, slightly sunburnt, emotionally destabilized, and ignoring every group chat notification lighting up your phone. This season’s reading list leans heavily into that second category.

Alongside buzzy new fiction and cult-favorite reissues, there has also been a noticeable rise in newly translated Arabic literature making its way onto English-language shelves, offering stories that feel far richer and stranger than the algorithm-friendly novels currently dominating TikTok recommendations. From Cairo rooftops and Iraqi exile communities to East London council offices, these books move across cities, memories, and political realities without ever feeling heavy-handed or didactic. Some are funny in deeply bleak ways, while others are intimate enough to feel almost intrusive. All of them deserve a place in your beach bag this summer.

‘On the Greenwich Line’ by Shady Lewis

Part bureaucratic satire, part quiet existential spiral, On the Greenwich Line follows a local government employee in East London attempting to navigate Britain’s increasingly hostile immigration systems while organizing the funeral of a young Syrian refugee named Ghiyath. What could have easily become an overly political novel instead unfolds with deadpan humor, emotional restraint, and a deeply human perspective on displacement, austerity, and survival. Shady Lewis writes London in a way that feels grimy, exhausted, and strangely tender all at once, while translator Katharine Halls preserves the novel’s sharp cynicism beautifully.

‘The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Sharawi the Adulterer’ by Belal Fadl

Few books capture Cairo with the same chaotic affection as Belal Fadl’s The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Sharawi the Adulterer. Set in the city’s smoky apartments and crowded alleyways during the 1990s, the novel follows a teenage aspiring writer escaping an abusive household and landing among an unforgettable cast of misfits, chain-smokers, drifters, and emotionally volatile eccentrics. Darkly funny and surprisingly moving, the book explores class, masculinity, art, and survival without ever losing its absurdist edge.

‘Empty Cages’ by Fatma Qandil

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, Empty Cages is less a conventional novel and more an unfiltered excavation of memory, grief, violence, and family. The story begins with something deceptively ordinary, an old tin of chocolates, before unfolding into a deeply personal portrait of one Egyptian woman’s life across several decades. Fatma Qandil’s writing feels startlingly intimate, moving through childhood, illness, addiction, motherhood, and loss with a level of honesty that can feel almost uncomfortable at times. Translator Adam Talib preserves the rawness and poetic texture of Qandil’s voice beautifully, making this one of the most emotionally resonant translated Arabic books to emerge in recent years.

‘Notes from a Lost Country’ by Sinan Antoon

Sinan Antoon has spent years writing some of the most important literary work to emerge from post-war Iraq, and Notes from a Lost Country continues that trajectory with devastating precision. The novel follows two Iraqi men living in exile in the United States. One is an elderly retired doctor in Brooklyn slowly disappearing into dementia and memories of Iraq before the war. The other is a young deserter carrying both physical and emotional scars after fleeing the Iraqi army. Their lives gradually intersect in ways that reveal how memory, exile, and trauma continue to shape identity long after people leave home. This is not necessarily a light beach read in the traditional sense, but it is exactly the kind of immersive, reflective novel summer often creates space for.

The Best Newly Translated Arabic Books to Read This Summer

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

The Best Newly Translated Arabic Books to Read This Summer

Related Stories

More From Art & Culture

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

Newsletter

The only newsletter you won't unsubscribe from

Follow Us