As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami’s sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s. The time was a transitional one—not only for the Middle East, but for America and the world. Lebanon in this era was just coming into its own as a cosmopolitan destination of the international jet set as well as earnest American educators seeking to modernize Arab society. The disruptive forces of the Middle East...

From the author of The Arab Predicament and Dream Palace of the Arabs comes a beautiful and haunting memoir of growing up in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s—the story of a sensitive young man and budding intellectual caught between tradition and modernity, east and west.As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami’s sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s. The...

Seen through the eyes of a strong-willed and perceptive young girl, Naphtalene beautifully captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s. Through her rich and lyrical descriptions, Alia Mamdouh vividly recreates a city of public steam baths, roadside butchers, and childhood games played in the same streets where political demonstrations against British colonialism are beginning to take place.At the heart of the novel is nine-year-old Huda, a gi...

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Naguib Mahfouz, offers this epic story of a single alley in Cairo and the generations that passed through it.A tumultuous neighbourhood known as 'the alley' has seen successive heroes rise and fall as they struggle to defend the rights left to them by their great ancestor, Gebelawi.From the supreme feudal lord who disowns one son for pride and puts another to the test, to the saviour who tries to free his people fro...

A young bride in a village in India obediently marries the man her parents have chosen for her. When she arrives in her new husband's village, she is soon face-to-face with what her future will look like. Her brother-in-law stares at her with hunger, an elder aunt berates her and allows her no joy, and her husband has a job in the far-away city of Bombay.What she doesn't know yet, however, is that she has a gift. A gift that will help her navigate this new life with ease and power....

Major-General Farhan Al-Balawi is a loyal soldier in the Saudi Arabian army who dotes on his beloved daughter, Maryam, his pride in her learning and independent spirit sharpened by the death of his elder son and his estrangement from the younger who has opted to pursue a hedonistic western lifestyle in the USA. Despite the love she shares with her family, her respect for her father, the pride she takes in her Arabian heritage and her loyalty to Islam, Maryam yearns for travel and the opportun...

August Book Sense PickA fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed 'scientist of women.' A purring, voluptuous siren. A young shop-girl enduring the clammy touch of her boss and hating herself for accepting the modest banknotes he tucks into her pocket afterward. An earnest, devout young doorman, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism. A cynical, secretly gay newspaper editor, helplessly in love with a peasant security guard. A roof-squatting tailor, schemi...

"In this satisfying, lyrical memoir," an American woman discovers her true faith—and true love—by converting to Islam and moving to Egypt ( Publishers Weekly).Raised in Boulder, Colorado, G. Willow Wilson moved to Egypt and converted to Islam shortly after college. Having written extensively on modern religion and the Middle East in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine, Wilson now shares her remarkable...

The instructions were simple: seek out and return home with the long-lost princess of Bagestan now that her family had regained control of the throne.But when he found her, Sheikh Sharif Azad al Dauleh fell hard and fast for Princess Shakira's sultry smile and mysterious aura. She was everything he never thought he'd wanted in a wife, and yet her fiery nature promised a lifetime of passion.He knew he needed to convince Shakira of the importance of fulfillin...

A delightful account of one woman's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman."A most enjoyable book abouut [Muslim women]—simple, dignified, human, colorful, sad and humble as the life they lead." —Muhsin Mahdi, Jewett Professor of Arabic Literature, Harvard Unversity.A wonderful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study that offers a unique insight into a part of the Middd...

In 1948, as violence erupts in Jerusalem, a young Arab woman, Hind Husseini, finds fifty-five abandoned children in the streets and faces the biggest challenge of her life. Hind establishes the Dar El-Tifel orphanage, dedicating her life to providing love, support and education to the children, changing their destiny.As the years pass and the conflict rages on, Hind finds that - despite her best efforts - some of her older students are taking part in the violent struggle for Palest...

Volume I of the masterful Cairo Trilogy. A national best-seller in both hardcover and paperback, it introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.