Every year, France, Japan, Brazil and more crown their best book. Spin the globe to see which ones you can read in English, and which are still waiting.
4,667 books · 44 prizes · 39 countries
Showing 55 of 114 books. 59 aren’t in English yet: show all.
IPAF 2024 · Winner
قناع بلون السماء · Qina' bi-lawn al-sama'
Bassem Khandaqji · 40 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:A Palestinian archaeologist from a camp near Ramallah discovers an Israeli identity card inside a second-hand coat and decides to take on the occupier's identity like a mask.
IPAF 2024 · Shortlist
خاتم سليمى · Khatam Sulayma
Rima Bali · 53 when first published
Novel · 255 pages · Love, War
AI-generated summary:The stories of a Spanish Jewish photographer and an Aleppo woman, who is in love with an Italian musician living in her city, cross between Aleppo and Toledo around an old ring.
IPAF 2022 · Winner
خبز على طاولة الخال ميلاد · Khubz ala Tawilat al-Khal Milad
Mohammed Alnaas · 30 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:In a closed village society, Milad keeps failing to be the man everyone expects, until his beloved Zeinab helps him stop trying: he runs the household while she earns their living.
IPAF 2022 · Shortlist
يوميات روز · Yawmiyyat Ruz
Reem al-Kamali · 49 when first published
Novel · 252 pages · Coming of age, Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1960s Dubai, before the UAE exists, a young woman who loves books is barred from studying literature in Damascus and pours her anger into secret diaries, which she throws into the creek once they are full.
IPAF 2021 · Winner
دفاتر الورّاق · Dafatir al-Warraq
Jalal Barjas · 50 when first published
Novel · 324 pages
AI-generated summary:Ibrahim, a well-read bookseller, slips into the identities of characters from the novels he loves; lonely and mistreated, he sinks into mental illness until he meets a woman who changes his fate.
IPAF 2021 · Shortlist
الملف 42 · Al-Malaff 42
Abdelmajid Sebbata · 31 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:An American novelist and a young Moroccan doctoral student hunt for the unknown author of a forgotten 1989 Moroccan novel in which the novelist's father, once a soldier at a US base in Morocco, appears.
IPAF 2021 · Shortlist
نازلة دار الأكابر · Nazilat Dar al-Akabir
Amira Ghenim · 42 when first published
Novel · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:A novel that imagines a love between the Tunisian reformer Tahar Haddad and a woman named Lella Zbaida, and lets women narrators tell a hidden chapter of the country's modern history.
IPAF 2021 · Shortlist
وشم الطائر · Washm al-Tair
Dunya Mikhail · 55 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · War, Love
AI-generated summary:Helen and Elias, a Yazidi couple in Iraq, find love and wed before ISIS overtakes their lives and sells Yazidi women, in a story steeped in Yazidi customs and folk tales.
IPAF 2020 · Shortlist
ملك الهند · Malik al-Hind
Jabbour Douaihy · 70 when first published
Novel · 220 pages · Crime, Family
AI-generated summary:Days after coming home to the village of Tel Safra from long years abroad, carrying a painting by Chagall, Zakaria Mubarak is found murdered at the edge of the village.
IPAF 2020 · Shortlist
حطب سراييفو · Hatab Sarajevo
Said Khatibi · 35 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · War, Migration
AI-generated summary:Salim from Algeria and Ivana from Bosnia have each fled a civil war at home and try to start again in Slovenia, where the wars they escaped keep following them.
IPAF 2019 · Winner
بريد الليل · Barid al-layl
Hoda Barakat · 66 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Migration
AI-generated summary:Exiles and migrants with no names, from countries the book never names, write letters that never reach the people they were meant for, and each letter is found by the next writer.
IPAF 2019 · Shortlist
صيف مع العدو · Sayf ma'a al-'aduww
Shahla Ujayli · 42 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Family, War, Migration
AI-generated summary:Having fled the war in Syria, Lamis arrives in Cologne to meet Nicholas, a Munich professor who once spent a summer in her home town of Raqqa and fell in love with her mother.
IPAF 2018 · Shortlist
زهور تأكلها النار · Zuhur ta'kuluha al-nar
Amir Tag Elsir · 56 when first published
Novel · 189 pages · War, Politics
AI-generated summary:Khamila, beautiful and rich, comes home from her studies in Egypt to the cosmopolitan town of al-Sur just as a group of religious zealots appears on its walls and then seizes the town.
IPAF 2018 · Shortlist
الحالة الحرجة للمدعو "ك" · Al-Hala al-harija lil-mad'u K
Aziz Mohammed · 30 when first published
Novel · 266 pages
AI-generated summary:After reading Kafka, a man known only as K decides to keep a diary, but keeps running up against his limited talent, his uneventful life and his wish to guard his privacy, until a piece of news upends everything.
IPAF 2018 · Shortlist
الخائفون · Al-Kha'ifun
Dima Wannous · 35 when first published
Novel · 176 pages
AI-generated summary:Suleima, anxious, reads the pages that Naseem has sent her and finds an unfinished novel about a woman made of fear, just like her, and wonders whether he wants her to write its ending.
IPAF 2018 · Shortlist
ساعة بغداد · Sa'at Baghdad
Shahad Al Rawi · 30 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Coming of age, War
AI-generated summary:In 1991, as coalition planes bomb Baghdad, a young girl meets her best friend in an air-raid shelter, and the two begin to share their hopes, dreams and fantasies.
IPAF 2017 · Winner
موت صغير · Mawt saghir
Mohammed Hasan Alwan · 37 when first published
Novel · 426 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:An imagined life of the Sufi master Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi, from his birth in al-Andalus in the twelfth century through a lifetime of journeys across the Islamic world.
IPAF 2017 · Shortlist
أولاد الغيتو - اسمي آدم · Awlad al-ghitu: Ismi Adam
Elias Khoury · 68 when first published
Novel · Historical, War · Awlad al-ghitu, book 1
AI-generated summary:In New York, Adam Dannoun, a Palestinian emigrant, abandons the novel he is trying to write and turns to his own story: a childhood in Lydda, whose people were driven out in 1948.
IPAF 2017 · Shortlist
السبيليات · Al-Sabiliyat
Ismail Fahd Ismail · 76 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · War, Nature
AI-generated summary:During the Iran–Iraq War the rivers feeding the palm groves along the Shatt al-Arab are dammed with earth, yet one green strip survives at al-Sabiliyat, kept alive by an old woman.
IPAF 2017 · Shortlist
في غرفة العنكبوت · Fi ghurfat al-'ankabut
Muhammad Abdelnabi · 39 when first published
Novel · 264 pages
AI-generated summary:Hani Mahfouz, acquitted after his arrest in the 2001 Queen Boat case in Cairo, leaves prison a broken man who has lost his voice, and begins to write every day about everything.
IPAF 2017 · Shortlist
زرايب العبيد · Zarayib al-'abid
Najwa Bin Shatwan · 46 when first published
Novel · 302 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:In Libya, a young master, Muhammad, falls in love with the slave Ta'wida, a bond his family will not tolerate, and when he is sent away on a trading journey they set out to undo it.
IPAF 2016 · Winner
مصائر: كونشرتو الهولوكوست والنكبة · Masa'ir: Kunshirtu al-Hulukust wa-l-Nakba
Rabai al-Madhoun · 70 when first published
Novel · 264 pages · Politics, Migration
AI-generated summary:After scattering part of her Armenian mother's ashes on the Thames, Julie keeps the rest to take back to Palestine, and sets out from London with her Palestinian husband Walid.
IPAF 2016 · Shortlist
حارس الموتى · Haris al-mawta
George Yaraq · 57 when first published
Novel · 244 pages · War
AI-generated summary:Early in the Lebanese civil war, Abir trains as a sniper, but the unexplained death of his closest friend scares him off the barracks and into a life of drifting, until he finds work in a hospital morgue.
IPAF 2016 · Shortlist
مديح لنساء العائلة · Madih li-nisa' al-'a'ila
Mahmoud Shukair · 74 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:The women of the Abd al-Lat clan, newly settled near Jerusalem, set tongues wagging as they shed the old ways, while Muhammad, son of the ageing patriarch Mannan, writes the clan's history in their honour.
IPAF 2016 · Shortlist
عطارد · 'Utarid
Mohammad Rabie · 37 when first published
Novel · 352 pages · Speculative, Politics
AI-generated summary:More than a decade after the police were routed on 28 January 2011, Egypt is under a mysterious occupation, and Otared, a police officer, joins what is left of the old force leading a resistance in the ruins of Cairo.
IPAF 2016 · Shortlist
سماء قريبة من بيتنا · Sama' qariba min baytina
Shahla Ujayli · 39 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Love, War, Family
AI-generated summary:In Amman, Joumane Badran, whose roots are in Raqqa, meets Nasser al-Amiri, who has come to bury his mother, and the two discover that their grandfathers' houses in Aleppo stood side by side.
IPAF 2015 · Winner
الطلياني · al-Talyani
Shukri Mabkhout · 52 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:At his father's funeral, Abdel Nasser, nicknamed the Italian, attacks his neighbour, the imam, in front of stunned mourners. A friend reconstructs his life from childhood to find out why.
Also: Comar d'Or 2015 winner
IPAF 2015 · Shortlist
شوق الدرويش · Shawq al-Darwish
Novel · 304 pages · Historical, Love, War
AI-generated summary:As Egyptian troops backed by the British overthrow the Mahdist state in Sudan, the former slave Bakhit Mandil walks out of prison, determined to take revenge on everyone who caused his imprisonment.
IPAF 2015 · Shortlist
طابق 99 · Tabiq 99
Jana Elhassan · 29 when first published
Novel · 264 pages · War, Love, Migration
AI-generated summary:In New York in 2000, Majd, a Palestinian scarred by the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, loves Hilda, a dancer from a Lebanese Christian family on the other side of the war, who decides to return to her village.
IPAF 2014 · Winner
فرانكشتاين في بغداد · Frankenstein fi Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi · 40 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Speculative, War
AI-generated summary:In Baghdad in 2005, junk dealer Hadi al-Attag stitches the body parts of bombing victims into one corpse. When a wandering soul enters it, the creature rises to take revenge on those who killed each of its parts.
Also: International Booker 2018 shortlist
IPAF 2014 · Shortlist
طشاري · Tashari
Inaam Kachachi · 61 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Migration, Family, War
AI-generated summary:Wardiya Iskandar, a doctor who worked in the villages of southern Iraq in the 1950s, ends up in Paris while her children are scattered across three continents, and her grandson builds the family a cemetery on the internet.
IPAF 2014 · Shortlist
لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة · La Sakakin fi Matabikh Hadhihi al-Madina
Khaled Khalifa · 49 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:Over half a century of dictatorship in Syria, the members of one family in Aleppo watch every one of their dreams die, living side by side with fear, oppression and stifled desires.
IPAF 2014 · Shortlist
طائر أزرق نادر يحلق معي · Ta'ir Azraq Nadir Yuhalliq Ma'i
Youssef Fadel · 64 when first published
Novel · 248 pages · Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:On his wedding night, air force pilot Aziz leaves his sixteen-year-old bride Zina at dawn and vanishes. For years she searches prisons, offices and towns for him, until a stranger slips a note into her pocket.
IPAF 2013 · Winner
ساق البامبو · Saq al-Bambu
Saud Alsanousi · 31 when first published
Novel · 377 pages · Migration, Family
AI-generated summary:José, the son of a Kuwaiti father and a Filipina maid, is sent away as a baby and grows up poor in the Philippines, dreaming of the land his mother called paradise, until at eighteen he can go back to Kuwait.
IPAF 2013 · Shortlist
مولانا · Mawlana
Ibrahim Essa · 47 when first published
Novel · 488 pages · Satire, Politics
AI-generated summary:Sheikh Hatem al-Shenawi, a witty preacher and the regular guest of a television show, has grown rich by giving viewers answers that please the public and state security rather than his own convictions.
IPAF 2013 · Shortlist
أنا، هي والأخريات · Ana, Hiya wa-l-Ukhrayat
Jana Elhassan · 27 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Sahar grows up lonely in a cold household and wants a different life from her mother's, but her marriage to Sami leads her into the same trap, and she takes refuge in an imagined companion.
IPAF 2013 · Shortlist
يا مريم · Ya Maryam
Sinan Antoon · 45 when first published
Novel · 136 pages · Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:Over a single day in Baghdad, two members of an Iraqi Christian family share a house: Youssef, an old man who refuses to leave the home he built, and Maha, a young woman uprooted by sectarian violence who waits to emigrate.
IPAF 2012 · Shortlist
عناق عند جسر بروكلين · 'Inaq 'inda Jisr Bruklin
Ezzedine C. Fishere · 45 when first published
Novel · 168 pages · Migration, Family
AI-generated summary:In New York, Darwish, an Egyptian professor, prepares a party for his granddaughter Salma's twenty-first birthday, and the relatives and friends he has invited, emigrants linked to him and to each other, make their way to the celebration.
IPAF 2011 · Winner
القوس والفراشة · Al-Qaws wa-l-farasha
Mohammed Achaari · 59 when first published
Novel · 335 pages · Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:Youssef al-Firsiwi, a Moroccan journalist and former left-wing activist, receives an anonymous letter telling him that his son, sent to Paris to study architecture, has died a martyr in Afghanistan.
IPAF 2011 · Winner
طوق الحمام · Tawq al-hamam
Novel · Crime
AI-generated summary:When the naked body of a young woman is found in an alley of Abu al-Ruus, an old quarter of Mecca, a police officer tries to find her killer, while the neighbourhood itself tells the story.
IPAF 2011 · Shortlist
صائد اليرقات · Sa'id al-yaraqat
Amir Tag Elsir · 50 when first published
Novel · 133 pages · Satire, Politics
AI-generated summary:Forced to retire after losing a leg in an accident, a former intelligence agent decides to write a novel about his years of spying and starts frequenting the writers' café he once kept under watch.
IPAF 2011 · Shortlist
معذّبتي · Mu'adhdhibati
Bensalem Himmich · 62 when first published
Novel · 244 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Hamouda, an innocent man, is abducted and locked in a secret prison run by Americans, where Arab and foreign interrogators alike question and torture him.
IPAF 2011 · Shortlist
بروكلين هايتس · Brooklyn Heights
Miral al-Tahawy · 42 when first published
Novel · 182 pages · Migration
AI-generated summary:Hind, an Egyptian poet and single mother, emigrates to New York with her seven-year-old son and settles among refugees and first-generation Arab immigrants in Brooklyn.
IPAF 2010 · Winner
ترمي بشرر · Tarmi bi-sharar
Abdo Khal · 47 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:A man from a wretched Jeddah neighbourhood confesses his years in the service of the rich owner of the vast palace built in its midst, where his job is to punish his master's enemies.
IPAF 2010 · Shortlist
يوم غائم في البر الغربي · Yawm gha'im fi al-barr al-gharbi
Mohamed Mansi Qandil · 63 when first published
Novel · 392 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Fleeing a violent husband, a mother changes her small daughter's name and leaves her at a convent in Asyut; the girl grows up to be a translator in the Egypt of great archaeological finds and nationalist struggle.
IPAF 2010 · Shortlist
السيدة من تل أبيب · Al-Sayyida min Tal Abib
Rabai al-Madhoun · 64 when first published
Novel · Politics, Migration
AI-generated summary:Walid Dahman, a Palestinian exile settled in London, flies to Tel Aviv to see his family in Gaza for the first time since 1967, and finds himself seated next to an Israeli artist, Dana Ahuva.
IPAF 2009 · Winner
عزازيل · Azazil
Youssef Ziedan · 50 when first published
Novel · 312 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In the fifth century, Hypa, an Egyptian monk, leaves Upper Egypt for Alexandria to study medicine and theology and, urged on by Azazeel, the devil within him, writes down his wanderings and his doubts.
IPAF 2009 · Shortlist
روائح ماري كلير · Rawa'ih Mari Klir
Habib Selmi · 57 when first published
Novel · 223 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Mahfoudh, an Arab man, and Marie-Claire, a Western woman, fall in love and share a flat, and the small habits of everyday life slowly reveal how fragile their bond is.
IPAF 2009 · Shortlist
زمن الخيول البيضاء · Zaman al-khuyul al-bayda'
Ibrahim Nasrallah · 53 when first published
Novel · 634 pages · Historical, Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:Following three generations of one family in a single Palestinian village, the novel traces Palestinian life from late Ottoman rule through the British Mandate to the Nakba of 1948.
IPAF 2009 · Shortlist
الحفيدة الأميركية · Al-Hafida al-amrikiyya
Inaam Kachachi · 56 when first published
Novel · 182 pages · War, Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:Zeina, an Iraqi-born American, returns to Iraq after the 2003 invasion as an interpreter for the US Army and finds herself torn between the two countries she belongs to.
IPAF 2009 · Shortlist
جوع · Ju'
Mohamed El-Bisatie · 70 when first published
Novel · 117 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In a poor village in the Egyptian countryside, the Zaghloul family lives with hunger every day, scraping together something to eat from one day to the next.
IPAF 2008 · Winner
واحة الغروب · Wahat al-ghurub
Bahaa Taher · 71 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:After the failed Urabi revolt of 1882, Egyptian police officer Mahmoud Abd el-Zahir is sent to govern the remote Siwa oasis as a punishment, and his Irish wife Catherine insists on coming with him.
IPAF 2008 · Shortlist
مطر حزيران · Matar Huzayran
Jabbour Douaihy · 57 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:Years after his father was killed in a massacre in their northern Lebanese village church in June 1957, Elia Kfoury returns from the United States to find out who he really is.
IPAF 2008 · Shortlist
مديح الكراهية · Madih al-karahiya
Khaled Khalifa · 42 when first published
Novel · 299 pages · Politics, Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In Aleppo in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a young woman grows up in a house of unmarried aunts as the fight between Islamists and the Syrian regime fills the city with hatred.
IPAF 2008 · Shortlist
تغريدة البجعة · Taghridat al-baja'a
Mekkawi Said · 52 when first published
Novel · Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:In downtown Cairo, Mustafa, a would-be poet who never made it, drifts between the café, the foreigners and the street children of the neighbourhood, haunted by the women he could not keep.