If you’ve been wondering what’s been keeping us up past bedtime (in the best way), here’s a peek at the books we’re reading right now—and the ones we think you should add to your list. This month’s stack takes us from the marshes of Iraq to the rooftops of Cairo, with titles exploring belonging, memory, love, and violence. From Adania Shibli’s piercing novel of dispossession and erasure to Yasmina Khadra’s unflinching portrait of life under extremism, here are the five books we’re reaching for this fall.
‘Babylon, Albion: A Personal History of Myth and Migration’ by Dalia al-Dujaili (Iraq)
GoodRead summary: “In this striking exploration of identity and place, Dalia Al-Dujaili considers what it means to belong in your land. Tracing the rich heritage of both the oak and the date palm, Iraqi marshes and Loch Ness monsters, Al-Dujaili marries Arab and Islamic mythology with the English and Christian pastoral. She draws from a rich array of sources to consider in a new light the communal lush, wild – and at times, dark – places we share. A love song to Britain, Iraq and the body of earth we hold in common, Babylon, Albion is an urgent reimagining of what it means to be native.”
‘If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English’ by Noor Naga (Egypt)
GoodRead summary: “In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire—for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other—takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.”
‘In the Name of Identity’ by Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
GoodRead summary: “I want to try and understand why so many people commit crimes in the name of identity,” writes Amin Maalouf. Identity is the crucible out of which we come: our background, our race, our gender, our tribal affiliations, our religion (or lack thereof), all go into making up who we are. All too often, however, the notion of identity–personal, religious, ethnic, or national–has given rise to heated passions and even massive crimes. Moving across the world’s history, faiths, and politics, he argues against an oversimplified and hostile interpretation of the concept. He cogently and persuasively examines identity in the context of the modern world, where it can be viewed as both glory and poison. Evident here are the dangers of using identity as a protective–and therefore aggressive–mechanism, the root of racial, geographical, and colonialist subjugation throughout history.”
‘Minor Detail’ by Adania Shibli (Palestine)
GoodRead summary: “Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.”
‘The Swallows of Kabul’ by Yasmina Khadra (Algeria)
GoodRead summary: “Set in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, this extraordinary novel “puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban” ( San Francisco Chronicle), taking readers into the seemingly divergent lives of two couples — and depicting with compassion and exquisite details the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world.”
