Arab American Heritage Month Stories & Culture

This powerful and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan; the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and an adventurous mapmaker’s apprentice—“perfectly aligns with the cultural moment” (The Providence Journal) and “shows how interconnected two supposedly opposing worlds can be” (The New York Times Book Review).
 

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction
Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award—Barbara Gittings Literature Award

​​From the award-winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars, a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts—a “vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night is a feat” (R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries).

“A major writer of our time.” —Alice Walker

The 20th anniversary edition of one of the biggest contributions to anglophile Palestinian literature, with over a million copies sold worldwide, featuring a new introduction from Maaza Mengiste.

“Precise, courageous, and dazzling.” —Teju Cole

From the author of the international bestseller Mornings in Jenin, a powerful, passionate story set in Gaza, of a family severed by colonialism, with a new introduction from Hala Alyan.

A Most Anticipated Book of 2026
Transfer Orbit • CrimeReads • The Bookseller

A Memory Called Empire meets Children of Time in this Arabfuturist debut set on a generation ship on the brink of revolution as its crew begin to ask why they should toil for a people, and an empire, none of them remember.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR • AN ELECTRIC LITERATURE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • The rich and deeply personal debut memoir by award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan, whose experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past, and the legacy of her family’s exile and displacement, all in the name of a new future.
 

LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025

“I am forever changed after reading this book.” —Javier Zamora, author of Solito

From the renowned Palestinian scholar, a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return home.

From the author of The Girls at 17 Swann Street comes a “masterful story of tragedy and redemption” (Hala Alyan, author of Salt Houses) “written in soul-searing prose” (BookPage, starred review) about a young Syrian couple in the throes of new love on the cusp of their bright future when a travel ban rips them apart on the eve of their son’s premature birth.
 

Two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked—over time and distance—by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music in this “breathtaking and simultaneously heartbreaking” (The Montecito Journal) story.
 

Compiled by bestselling author susan abulhawa, an Arabic-English bilingual anthology of essays from eighteen young Palestinian writers trying to survive the genocide in Gaza.
 

Arab American Book Award Winner
2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
2020 Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist
2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner
Longlisted for Rathbones Folio Prize

“Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us.” —Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

In this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times), Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.

“Fiercely funny, sexy, and culturally resonant.” —People, Best Books of the Month • “Shamieh balances her characters’ painful family history and their boisterously funny voices.” —The New Yorker

A “wonderfully brash and sparkling” (Oprah Daily, Best Books of the Year) novel that explores exile, love, and freedom across three generations of women—“a Palestinian American Sex and the City” (The Atlantic).

A charming nobleman accidentally joins a pirate ship and falls for its debonair captain in this swashbuckling queer debut that’s perfect for fans of F.T. Lukens and Our Flag Means Death.
 

The “astonishing and deeply poignant” (The Washington Post) memoir of one man’s search for a beloved family friend explores the depth of Iranian culture and the sweep of its history, and transcends today’s news headlines to remind us of the humanity that connects us all.
 

“A deeply felt memoir of race and history that defies social erasures of the diasporic Palestinian experience, They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful boldly explores how politicized identities, especially within the US, are shaped and manipulated by broader agendas.” —The Whiting Award Judges Citation

In the tradition of Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, a stirring and poignant memoir that follows Elena Dudum’s transformational journey as she interrogates her evolving relationship to Palestine.

From Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, an epic and enthralling account of six Syrians fighting for a better world, in the tradition of classic works by Philip Gourevitch and Katherine Boo.
 

A stunning, soul-stirring, philosophical and political treatise on what liberation for Palestine—and all people—will look like in the twenty-first century.