Upon its initial release in Arabic in the fall of 2014, Using Life received acclaim in Egypt and the wider Arab world. But in 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt published in a literary journal harmed public morality. His imprisonment marks the first time in modern Egypt that an author has been jailed for a work of literature. Writers and literary organizations around the world rallied to support Naji, and he was released...

Jeremy Kroeker is a Mennonite with a motorcycle. He doesn’t have a funny beard and he’s never even driven a buggy, but his family hails from the same Mennonite community that Miriam Toews fictionalized in A Complicated Kindness. From childhood through college, Kroeker attended Christian schools where he learned to think critically back to predetermined conclusions.Years later, when his faith begins to unravel, Kroeker stops short of tossing it all aside, choosing instead t...

When Arcade Publishing originally contracted this extraordinary collection of poetry and literature, the Department of the Treasury was attempting to censor the publication of works from countries on America’s “enemies list.” Arcade, along with the PEN American Center, the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, and the Association of American University Presses, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the United States government. Their landmark...

Acclaimed travel writer Rick Antonson sets his adventurous compass on Mount Ararat, exploring the region’s long history, religious mysteries, and complex politics.Mount Ararat is the most fabled mountain in the world. For millennia this massif in eastern Turkey has been rumored as the resting place of Noah’s Ark following the Great Flood. But it also plays a significant role in the longstanding conflict between Turkey and Armenia.Author Rick Antonson joined...

_______________'Beautifully written in cunning, punning, glancing prose' - Independent'A whirlwind … Owes plenty to Salman Rushdie and some to Hollywood … Exuberant, knowingly exotic and deceptively serious' - Guardian'Kamila Shamsie has created a rich, bright world' - Times Literary Supplement_______________BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER O...

As the Western world struggles to comprehend the paradoxes of modern Turkey, Tales from the Expat Harem reveals its most personal nuances. This illuminating anthology provides a window into the country from the perspective of thirty-two expatriates from seven different nations-artists, entrepreneurs, Peace Corps volunteers, archaeologists, missionaries, and others-who established lives in Turkey for work, love, or adventure.Through narrative essays covering the last four d...

Boom town, modern marvel, commercial hub, where middle-east meets wealthy west, playground for tourists, crawling with ex-pats, built by Indians, owned by Arabs, Dubai has risen from next to nothing to an awful lot in little more than thirty years. How? And can it go on? Has it sold itself to the corporate dollar? Is it anything more than a mall in the desert? Will the sands return? Joe Bennett goes to find out.

** WINNER OF THE ENGLISH PEN WRITERS IN TRANSLATION AWARD ** **LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2013 FRANK O'CONNOR INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD** **BOOK OF THE MONTH IN THE SKINNY** 'Perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive...' – The Guardian. A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by an insurgent into the ultimate act of terror…A deviser of crosswords survives a car-bomb attack, only to discover...

**"Guest workers of the United Arab Emirates embody multiple worlds and identities and long for home in a fantastical debut work of fiction, winner of the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.… An enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation." —**Kirkus ReviewsIn the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct the towering monuments to wealth that punc...

Featuring:Nedim Gursel (Istanbul), Gamal Al-Ghitani (Alexandria), Fadwa Al-Qasem (Dubai), Ala Hlehel (Akka), Hassan Blasim (Baghdad), Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (Riyadh), Elias Farkouh (Amman), Nabil Sulayman (Latakia), Joumana Haddad (Beirut), and Yitzhak Laor (Tel Aviv).About the Book‘Madinah’ – the Arabic word for ‘city’ – may conjure labyrinthine streets and the hustle and bustle of the souq in Westerners’ minds, but for the inhabitants ...

Khartoum, according to one theory, takes its name from the Beja word hartooma, meaning meeting place . Geographically, culturally and historically, the Sudanese capital is certainly that: a meeting place of the Blue and White Niles, a confluence of Arabic and African histories, and a destination point for countless refugees displaced by Sudan s long, troubled history of forced migration.In the pages of this book the first major anthology of Sudanese stories to be translated into En...