Literary Fiction

Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, translated by Barbara Romaine, follows four young Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper who are assigned to interview one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba. The elderly man refuses to cooperate, challenging the journalists' assumptions about memory, history...

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan is a sweeping multigenerational novel following a Palestinian family across five decades. Beginning in Nablus in 1967, the story follows Alia and her family as war and political upheaval force them from Palestine to Kuwait and, later, across Beirut,...

Beer in the Snooker Club by Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali is a classic novel of exile and cultural displacement. Set between London and Cairo during the era of Nasser, it follows Ram and Font as they struggle with political upheaval, privilege, friendship and their...

A warm, witty and bittersweet novel told through the letters of Sybil Van Antwerp, a 73-year-old woman who uses correspondence to make sense of her life. When letters from her past force her to confront painful memories and long-held regrets, Sybil must find the...

A Stranger in Baghdad by Elizabeth Loudon is an intergenerational novel moving between Baghdad and London. The story begins in 2003, when Anglo-Iraqi psychiatrist Mona Haddad receives an unexpected visitor who may finally reveal what happened to her family before they left Iraq. The...

Discover the must-read Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, the perfect uplifting summer read, now a major Apple TV series starring Brie Larson.'The most charming, life-enhancing novel I've read in ages' Sunday Times‘A page-turning and highly satisfying tale’ – Maggie Shipstead, author of Great CircleYour ability to change everything - including yourself - starts hereChemist...

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is a powerful literary novel following Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American struggling with addiction, grief and questions about his family's past. Cyrus's mother died when her passenger plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was a...

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad follows Sonia Nasir, a British-Palestinian actress who returns to Haifa after years away. She becomes involved in a production of Hamlet in the West Bank, where theatre, family, identity and political reality become increasingly intertwined. The novel explores belonging,...

Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth is a tender coming-of-age novel set in rural Ireland in the early 1990s. Lucy has always felt out of place in the small village of Crossmore. During one long, hot summer, her friendship with Susannah develops into an intense...

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter is an inventive and emotionally powerful novel about grief, family and healing. After the sudden death of their mother, two young boys and their father struggle to cope with their loss. Into their lives comes...

Artie Dam appears to have an ordinary, settled life: he teaches history, enjoys sailing and shares his home with his wife of three decades. Yet beneath the surface, he is troubled by loneliness and questions about how little people truly understand one another. When...

When English pilot-major John Blackthorne is shipwrecked in Japan in the early seventeenth century, he finds himself in a world completely unlike his own. As civil war threatens the country, Blackthorne becomes involved in the struggles of powerful warlords and gradually rises from an...

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine is a tragicomic family novel set largely in Beirut. Sixty-three-year-old Raja, a philosophy teacher, lives with his fiercely intrusive mother, Zalfa. When Raja receives an invitation to a writing residency...

Floodlines by Saleem Haddad is a sweeping multigenerational novel about three estranged Iraqi-British sisters—Mediha, Zainab and Ishtar—who are brought back together in 2014 after discovering their late father's lost paintings. As the family investigates the paintings and their father's legacy, buried secrets and old...

Too Soon by Betty Shamieh is a literary family saga following three generations of Palestinian American women. Arabella, a New York theatre director, is drawn into a complicated relationship and a theatre project in the West Bank. Her mother Naya and grandmother Zoya have...

A classic novel of desire and jealousy. Ann Prentice falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness. Her only child, Sarah, cannot contemplate the idea of her mother marrying again and wrecks any chance of her remarriage. Resentment and jealousy corrode...

A striking novel of truth and soul-searching. Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks.Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes,...

For One More Day by Mitch Albom is a moving novel about family, regret, forgiveness and the possibility of reconnecting with someone we have lost. Charley Benetto is a broken man who has lost his job, his family and his relationship with his daughter....

Confessions of a Forty-Something Fk Up** by Alexandra Potter is a funny and heartfelt contemporary novel about starting over when life doesn't turn out as planned. Nell Stevens returns to London after her business and relationship collapse, only to discover that her friends have...

Days of Light by Megan Hunter is a sweeping historical novel inspired by the influential Bloomsbury Group, exploring love, loss, desire and the passage of time. It begins on Easter Sunday in 1938, when nineteen-year-old Ivy gathers with her bohemian family and their friends...