International Prize for Arabic Fiction

IPAF 2026 · Shortlist

أصل الأنواع

Asl al-anwa'

AITitle translated by AI:“The Origin of Species”

Ahmad Abdulatif · 47 when first published

Novel · 258 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:In a Cairo close to vanishing, people begin to lose their hair, then their fingers and toes, along with love and anger, while the dead escape their demolished tombs and ghosts walk beside the living.

IPAF 2026 · Shortlist

منام القيلولة

Manam al-qaylula

AITitle translated by AI:“Siesta Dream”

Amin Zaoui · 69 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · War, Family, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:During Algeria's independence war, a mother of three fights off an assault by a traitor posing as a resistance fighter, who then spreads the rumour that the rebels killed her husband for treason.

IPAF 2026 · Shortlist

الرائي

Al-Ra'i

AITitle translated by AI:“The Seer”

Diaa Jubaili · 48 when first published

Novel · Historical, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Damu the Sumerian, a scribe who cannot die, witnesses and records the history of Mesopotamia from the end of the Sumerian city-states to the 2010s.

IPAF 2026 · Shortlist

فوق رأسي سحابة

Fawqa ra'si sahaba

AITitle translated by AI:“A Cloud Above My Head”

Doaa Ibrahim · 36 when first published

Novel · 208 pages · Crime, Family

AIAI-generated summary:From a prison cell, a nurse whose father walked out on her to wed a Japanese woman tells how she came to end the lives of her patients and of everyone who tried to befriend or love her.

IPAF 2026 · Shortlist

غيبة مي

Ghaybat Mai

AITitle translated by AI:“Mai's Absence”

Najwa Barakat · 65 when first published

Novel

AIAI-generated summary:Past eighty and alone in a ninth-floor flat in Beirut, looked after by the concierge and her doctor while her sons live abroad, a woman hears a voice call her name one dawn, inside a flat locked behind two doors.

IPAF 2025 · Shortlist

دانشمند

Danishmand

AITitle translated by AI:“Scholar of Scholars”

Ahmed Fal Al Din · 46 when first published

Novel · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A novel of the life of the theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, shown not as the familiar icon but as an anxious, searching man in an age of political strife, sectarian feuds and palace intrigue.

IPAF 2025 · Shortlist

وادي الفراشات

Wadi al-farashat

AITitle translated by AI:“The Valley of Butterflies”

Azher Jirjees · 51 when first published

Novel · 215 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:In Baghdad a sacked government archivist ends up driving a hearse to a graveyard for abandoned children and outcasts, where the dead are said to turn into glowing butterflies.

IPAF 2025 · Shortlist

Daughters of the Same Secret

ميثاق النساء · Mithaq al-nisa'

Haneen Al-Sayegh · 37 when first published

Novel · 336 pages · Family, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In a conservative Druze village, a young woman whose devout parents stand between her and the American University of Beirut makes a bargain: marriage to a wealthy Druze man in exchange for her freedom.

IPAF 2025 · Shortlist

ملمس الضوء

Malmas al-daw'

AITitle translated by AI:“The Touch of Light”

Nadia Najar · 50 when first published

Novel · 247 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A blind woman uses a phone app that describes photographs to tell the stories behind her family's pictures, and with them the history of Dubai and Bahrain before and after oil.

IPAF 2025 · Shortlist

المسيح الأندلسي

Al-Masih al-Andalusi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Andalusian Messiah”

Taissier Khalaf · 57 when first published

Novel · 358 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Spain, 1592: after a Morisco woman is tried and killed by the Inquisition, her son, a devout Catholic, begins to doubt the court's story and the words she left him, that he is an Arab Muslim named Issa ibn Muhammad.

IPAF 2024 · Shortlist

مقامرة على شرف الليدي ميتسي

Muqamara 'ala sharaf al-Lady Mitsi

AITitle translated by AI:“A Wager on Lady Mitzi's Honour”

Ahmed Al-Morsi · 31 when first published

Novel · 350 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Egypt, early in the twentieth century: a poor Bedouin boy made to ride in a horse race, an English lady, a horse broker and a pensioned-off policeman who bets to cover his ailing wife's care cross paths at the racecourse.

IPAF 2024 · Shortlist

الفسيفسائي

Al-Fusayfisa'i

AITitle translated by AI:“The Mosaicist”

Eissa Nasiri · 38 when first published

Novel · 453 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Three manuscripts set in the Moroccan town of Oualili, beside the Roman ruins of Volubilis, link the second century, an American writer's hunt for a stolen mosaic in the 1990s and a psychiatrist's notes on two patients.

IPAF 2024 · Shortlist

سماء القدس السابعة

Sama' al-Quds al-sabi'a

AITitle translated by AI:“The Seventh Sky of Jerusalem”

Osama Al-Eissa · 60 when first published

Novel · 677 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In the 1970s Jerusalem, out of its second war in twenty years and close to famine, tries to absorb the shock of a new occupation, seen through the ordinary people of the walled city rather than its slogans.

IPAF 2024 · Shortlist

باهبل: مكة Multiverse 1945-2009

Bahbel: Makkah Multiverse 1945-2009

Raja Alem

Novel · 336 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In an old Mecca family ruled by its father, a boy is born as one of twins, though his twin has vanished; growing up among the family's women, he sets out to write their lives from 1945 to 2009.

IPAF 2024 · Shortlist

Suleima's Ring

خاتم سليمى · Khatam Sulayma

Rima Bali · 53 when first published

Novel · 255 pages · Love, War

AIAI-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 2023 · Shortlist

حجر السعادة

Hajar al-Saada

AITitle translated by AI:“The Stone of Happiness”

Azher Jirjees · 49 when first published

Novel · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:After his younger brother drowns in the Tigris at Mosul, the boy Kamal Touma flees his father's fury, picks up a small stone in a dreaded orchard and rides a lorry south to Baghdad.

IPAF 2023 · Shortlist

الأفق الأعلى

Al-Ufuq al-Ala

AITitle translated by AI:“The Highest Horizon”

Fatima Abdulhamid · 40 when first published

Novel · Satire, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Azrael, the angel of death, tells the reader about the people he visits, among them Suleiman, a widower in his fifties who has always lived in the care of women and falls for a neighbour he glimpses from his balcony.

IPAF 2023 · Shortlist

أيام الشمس المشرقة

Ayyam al-Shams al-Mushriqa

AITitle translated by AI:“Days of the Shining Sun”

Miral al-Tahawy · 54 when first published

Novel · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:In Shining Sun, an imaginary small town on the southwestern border of America where workers and migrants are smuggled in every day, the novel follows people on the margins of Western society.

IPAF 2023 · Shortlist

كونشيرتو قورينا إدواردو

Konshirto Qurina Idwardo

Najwa Bin Shatwan · 52 when first published

Novel · Coming of age, Family, War

AIAI-generated summary:A Libyan girl from a family of Greek origin grows up from the 1970s to the civil war of 2014, as politics, revolution and war reshape her family and her country.

IPAF 2023 · Shortlist

مَنّا

Manna

AITitle translated by AI:“Drought”

Siddik Hadj-Ahmed · 54 when first published

Novel · Migration, War, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:A Tuareg refugee who fled the 1973 drought in northern Mali tells his life and his son's in a manuscript, later found stained in a box, covering the forty years before Gaddafi's fall.

IPAF 2022 · Shortlist

دلشاد: سيرة الجوع والشبع

Dilshad: Sirat al-Ju wa-l-Shiba

AITitle translated by AI:“Dilshad: A Life of Hunger and Plenty”

Bushra Khalfan · 52 when first published

Novel · Historical, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In Muscat in the first half of the twentieth century, Dilshad, a boy of unknown parentage, grows up poor in a Baloch quarter; years later, blind and desperate, he sends his daughter Maryam to work in a merchant's house.

IPAF 2022 · Shortlist

الخط الأبيض من الليل

Al-Khatt al-Abyad min al-Layl

AITitle translated by AI:“The White Line of the Night”

Khalid Al-Nasrallah · 34 when first published

Novel · Politics, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:A man obsessed with words since childhood becomes a censor of books and suffers each time he must ban one, in a country where the authorities are at war with their own people.

IPAF 2022 · Shortlist

أسير البرتغاليين

Asir al-Burtughaliyyin

AITitle translated by AI:“The Prisoner of the Portuguese”

Mohsine Loukili · 43 when first published

Novel · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A poor man from Fez leaves home to look for work and ends up a prisoner in a Portuguese fort on the African coast, where he must tell his jailer a story that pleases him or be executed.

IPAF 2022 · Shortlist

Rose's Diaries

يوميات روز · Yawmiyyat Ruz

Reem al-Kamali · 49 when first published

Novel · 252 pages · Coming of age, Family, Historical

AIAI-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 2022 · Shortlist

ماكيت القاهرة

Makit al-Qahira

AITitle translated by AI:“Cairo Maquette”

Tareq Imam · 44 when first published

Novel · Speculative, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 2045 an independent Cairo gallery for art from the margins offers a grant to build a small model of the city as it was in 2020, when it was still Egypt's capital.

IPAF 2021 · Shortlist

The Secrets of Folder 42

الملف 42 · Al-Malaff 42

Abdelmajid Sebbata · 31 when first published

Novel · 368 pages · Crime

AIAI-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

عين حمورابي

Ayn Hammurabi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Eye of Hammurabi”

Abdulatif Ould Abdullah · 32 when first published

Novel · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:A man who fled an angry crowd after robbing a saint's tomb for antiquities with a German friend is interrogated in a military barracks and offered protection in return for a full confession.

IPAF 2021 · Shortlist

A Calamity of Noble Houses

نازلة دار الأكابر · Nazilat Dar al-Akabir

Amira Ghenim · 42 when first published

Novel · Historical, Love

AIAI-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

The Bird Tattoo

وشم الطائر · Washm al-Tair

Dunya Mikhail · 55 when first published

Novel · 304 pages · War, Love

AIAI-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 2021 · Shortlist

الاشتياق إلى الجارة

Al-Ishtiyaq ila al-Jara

AITitle translated by AI:“Longing for the Woman Next Door”

Habib Selmi · 69 when first published

Novel · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A sixty-year-old Tunisian, well educated and with a foreign wife, and a younger Tunisian woman of modest background in the same building drift from his guarded condescension into an unusual relationship.

IPAF 2020 · Shortlist

التانكي

Al-Tanki

AITitle translated by AI:“The Tank”

Alia Mamdouh · 75 when first published

Novel

AIAI-generated summary:After four decades of exile, a writer imagines returning to Iraq and sets out to trace the great changes her country and its society have been through, a journey she shares with her characters.

IPAF 2020 · Shortlist

The King of India

ملك الهند · Malik al-Hind

Jabbour Douaihy · 70 when first published

Novel · 220 pages · Crime, Family

AIAI-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

الحي الروسي

Al-Hayy al-Rusi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Russian Quarter”

Khalil Alrez · 63 when first published

Novel · War

AIAI-generated summary:For years a city neighbourhood known as the Russian Quarter keeps out of the war raging around it, until it is forced in and takes part with stories rather than weapons.

IPAF 2020 · Shortlist

Sarajevo Firewood

حطب سراييفو · Hatab Sarajevo

Said Khatibi · 35 when first published

Novel · 320 pages · War, Migration

AIAI-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 2020 · Shortlist

فردقان – اعتقال الشيخ الرئيس

Fardaqan: Itiqal al-Shaykh al-Rais

AITitle translated by AI:“Fardaqan: The Detention of the Great Sheikh”

Youssef Ziedan · 60 when first published

Novel · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:The life of Avicenna, the polymath called the Great Sheikh, from his birth close to Bukhara to his death in Persia; after two terms as vizier he is locked away in the isolated castle of Fardaqan.

IPAF 2019 · Shortlist

الوصايا

Al-Wasaya

AITitle translated by AI:“The Commandments”

Adel Esmat · 59 when first published

Novel · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In December 1978, the old Sheikh Abd al-Rahman Salim tells his grandson he will die in two days, and hands down to him ten commandments distilled from a long life.

Also: Sawiris 2019 ★ winner

IPAF 2019 · Shortlist

النبيذة

Al-Nabidha

AITitle translated by AI:“The Outcast”

Inaam Kachachi · 65 when first published

Novel · 325 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Taj al-Muluk, a journalist who ran the first magazine in Baghdad under the monarchy, is drawn into anti-government activity and leaves to work for an Arabic radio station in Karachi.

IPAF 2019 · Shortlist

شمس بيضاء باردة

Shams bayda' barida

AITitle translated by AI:“Cold White Sun”

Kafa Al-Zou'bi · 53 when first published

Novel · 318 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A poor, bookish young Jordanian of Bedouin stock, estranged from his conservative family, teaches in Amman and rents a squalid windowless room where its previous tenant, an old lottery-ticket seller, died unnoticed.

IPAF 2019 · Shortlist

بأيّ ذنب رحلت؟

Bi-ayy dhanb rahalat?

AITitle translated by AI:“For What Sin Did She Leave?”

Mohammed Al-Maazuz · 59 when first published

Novel · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Divorced but unbowed, Rahil, a musician who finds refuge in Sartre and Beauvoir, resolves to face the world again through music, as her mother once did through painting.

IPAF 2019 · Shortlist

Summer with the Enemy

صيف مع العدو · Sayf ma'a al-'aduww

Shahla Ujayli · 42 when first published

Novel · 288 pages · Family, War, Migration

AIAI-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

Flowers in Flames

زهور تأكلها النار · Zuhur ta'kuluha al-nar

Amir Tag Elsir · 56 when first published

Novel · 189 pages · War, Politics

AIAI-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

The Critical Case of a Man Called K

الحالة الحرجة للمدعو "ك" · Al-Hala al-harija lil-mad'u K

Aziz Mohammed · 30 when first published

Novel · 266 pages

AIAI-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

The Frightened Ones

الخائفون · Al-Kha'ifun

Dima Wannous · 35 when first published

Novel · 176 pages

AIAI-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

The Baghdad Clock

ساعة بغداد · Sa'at Baghdad

Shahad Al Rawi · 30 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Coming of age, War

AIAI-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 2018 · Shortlist

وارث الشواهد

Warith al-shawahid

AITitle translated by AI:“Heir of the Tombstones”

Walid Shurafa · 44 when first published

Novel · 159 pages · Politics, Family

AIAI-generated summary:From a prison cell on Mount Carmel, the Palestinian al-Wahid remembers his childhood in the 1967 war and his family's forced departure from their village, Ein Hawd, which Israel turned into an artists' village.

IPAF 2017 · Shortlist

Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam

أولاد الغيتو - اسمي آدم · Awlad al-ghitu: Ismi Adam

Elias Khoury · 68 when first published

Novel · Historical, War · Awlad al-ghitu, book 1

AIAI-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

The Old Woman and the River

السبيليات · Al-Sabiliyat

Ismail Fahd Ismail · 76 when first published

Novel · 176 pages · War, Nature

AIAI-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

In the Spider's Room

في غرفة العنكبوت · Fi ghurfat al-'ankabut

Muhammad Abdelnabi · 39 when first published

Novel · 264 pages

AIAI-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

The Slave Yards

زرايب العبيد · Zarayib al-'abid

Najwa Bin Shatwan · 46 when first published

Novel · 302 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-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 2017 · Shortlist

مقتل بائع الكتب

Maqtal ba'i' al-kutub

AITitle translated by AI:“The Killing of the Bookseller”

Saad Mohammed Raheem · 59 when first published

Novel · 216 pages · Crime, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Hired by a wealthy patron who keeps his name secret, the journalist Majid Baghdadi spends two months in Baqubah to write a book on the life and murder of Mahmoud al-Marzouq, a seventy-year-old bookseller and painter.

IPAF 2016 · Shortlist

Guard of the Dead

حارس الموتى · Haris al-mawta

George Yaraq · 57 when first published

Novel · 244 pages · War

AIAI-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

Praise for the Women of the Family

مديح لنساء العائلة · Madih li-nisa' al-'a'ila

Mahmoud Shukair · 74 when first published

Novel · 240 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-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

Otared

عطارد · 'Utarid

Mohammad Rabie · 37 when first published

Novel · 352 pages · Speculative, Politics

AIAI-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

A Sky So Close to Us

سماء قريبة من بيتنا · Sama' qariba min baytina

Shahla Ujayli · 39 when first published

Novel · 304 pages · Love, War, Family

AIAI-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 2016 · Shortlist

نوميديا

Numidya

Tareq Bakari · 27 when first published

Novel · 422 pages · Love, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Julia, a Frenchwoman, writes the story of her Moroccan lover Murad, a foundling despised and beaten in the village where he was found, who has turned to love as a way of taking revenge on fate.

IPAF 2015 · Shortlist

ممر الصفصاف

Mamarr al-Safsaf

AITitle translated by AI:“Willow Alley”

Ahmed al-Madeeni · 67 when first published

Novel · 382 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In a new neighbourhood rising out of an old Moroccan city, people try to live side by side at the mercy of a few arrogant tyrants, while the caretaker of a building under construction fights for his place.

IPAF 2015 · Shortlist

حياة معلقة

Hayat Mu'allaqa

AITitle translated by AI:“A Suspended Life”

Atef Abu Saif · 42 when first published

Novel · Politics, War

AIAI-generated summary:Naim, who owns the only printing press in a Gaza refugee camp and prints the posters of its martyrs, is killed by an army bullet, and his son refuses to let a poster be printed for him.

IPAF 2015 · Shortlist

The Longing of the Dervish

شوق الدرويش · Shawq al-Darwish

Hammour Ziada

Novel · 304 pages · Historical, Love, War

AIAI-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

The Ninety-Ninth Floor

طابق 99 · Tabiq 99

Jana Elhassan · 29 when first published

Novel · 264 pages · War, Love, Migration

AIAI-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 2015 · Shortlist

ألماس ونساء

Almas wa-Nisa'

AITitle translated by AI:“Diamonds and Women”

Lina Huyan Elhassan · 39 when first published

Novel · 239 pages · Migration, Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Almaz, a Christian woman from Damascus, marries Count Karam Khoury, a Lebanese living in Paris, and a love story carries her across the Atlantic to São Paulo, where she builds a world among the Arab emigrants.

IPAF 2014 · Shortlist

تغريبة العبدي المشهور بولد الحمرية

Taghribat al-'Abdi al-Mashhur bi-Wild al-Hamriyya

AITitle translated by AI:“The Wanderings of al-Abdi, Known as Son of al-Hamriyya”

Abdelrahim Lahbibi · 63 when first published

Novel · 255 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A researcher comes across an old manuscript telling of al-Abdi's journey from Morocco to the Hijaz in search of learning, and after failing to have it edited as a university thesis, decides to edit it himself.

IPAF 2014 · Shortlist

الفيل الأزرق

al-Fil al-Azraq

AITitle translated by AI:“The Blue Elephant”

Ahmed Mourad · 34 when first published

Novel · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:After five years of self-imposed isolation, the psychiatrist Yehia returns to Cairo's Abbasiya mental hospital, where, in the ward that decides the fate of accused criminals, he finds an old friend whose future now lies in his hands.

IPAF 2014 · Shortlist

The Dispersal

طشاري · Tashari

Inaam Kachachi · 61 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Migration, Family, War

AIAI-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

No Knives in the Kitchens of This City

لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة · La Sakakin fi Matabikh Hadhihi al-Madina

Khaled Khalifa · 49 when first published

Novel · 224 pages · Family, Politics

AIAI-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

A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me

طائر أزرق نادر يحلق معي · Ta'ir Azraq Nadir Yuhalliq Ma'i

Youssef Fadel · 64 when first published

Novel · 248 pages · Politics, Love

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

سعادته... السيد الوزير

Sa'adatuhu... al-Sayyid al-Wazir

AITitle translated by AI:“His Excellency the Minister”

Hussein al-Wad · 63 when first published

Novel · 264 pages · Satire, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:A Tunisian schoolteacher unexpectedly becomes a government minister, and from his new office sees the corruption spreading through the country and its institutions.

IPAF 2013 · Shortlist

The Televangelist

مولانا · Mawlana

Ibrahim Essa · 47 when first published

Novel · 488 pages · Satire, Politics

AIAI-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

All the Women Inside Me

أنا، هي والأخريات · Ana, Hiya wa-l-Ukhrayat

Jana Elhassan · 27 when first published

Novel · 224 pages · Family

AIAI-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

القندس

al-Qundus

AITitle translated by AI:“The Beaver”

Mohammed Hasan Alwan · 32 when first published

Novel · 319 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:At forty and disillusioned, Ghalib al-Wajzi leaves Riyadh for Portland, Oregon. Fishing on the Willamette River in the company of a beaver, he goes back over three generations of his fractured family.

IPAF 2013 · Shortlist

The Baghdad Eucharist

يا مريم · Ya Maryam

Sinan Antoon · 45 when first published

Novel · 136 pages · Family, Politics

AIAI-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

دمية النار

Dumyat al-Nar

AITitle translated by AI:“The Doll of Fire”

Bachir Mefti · 41 when first published

Novel · 165 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Years after the mysterious Reda Chaouch vanished, a novelist receives the manuscript of his life. The son of a prison director, Chaouch swore never to resemble his father, yet was drawn into a group that operates in the shadows.

IPAF 2012 · Shortlist

Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge

عناق عند جسر بروكلين · 'Inaq 'inda Jisr Bruklin

Ezzedine C. Fishere · 45 when first published

Novel · 168 pages · Migration, Family

AIAI-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 2012 · Shortlist

نساء البساتين

Nisa' al-Basatin

AITitle translated by AI:“The Women of al-Basatin”

Habib Selmi · 59 when first published

Novel · 207 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:After five years abroad, a Tunisian man comes home and spends ten days in his married brother's flat in al-Basatin, a district of Tunis, watching the women around him and a society torn between tradition and modernity.

IPAF 2012 · Shortlist

شريد المنازل

Sharid al-Manazil

AITitle translated by AI:“The Vagrant”

Jabbour Douaihy · 61 when first published

Novel · 257 pages · War, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Nizam, born to a Muslim family but raised by a Christian one, belongs to no sect or region. As a young man he throws himself into the free, restless Beirut of the 1960s and early 1970s, before the city falls apart.

IPAF 2012 · Shortlist

العاطل

al-'Atil

AITitle translated by AI:“The Unemployed”

Nasser Iraq · 50 when first published

Novel · 335 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:An educated young Egyptian from a modest family finds no work in Cairo and leaves for Dubai, where a world of new people and nationalities opens up to him, along with the kindness and meanness of friends and relatives.

IPAF 2011 · Shortlist

The Grub Hunter

صائد اليرقات · Sa'id al-yaraqat

Amir Tag Elsir · 50 when first published

Novel · 133 pages · Satire, Politics

AIAI-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

My Torturess

معذّبتي · Mu'adhdhibati

Bensalem Himmich · 62 when first published

Novel · 244 pages · Politics

AIAI-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

رقصة شرقية

Raqsa sharqiyya

AITitle translated by AI:“An Oriental Dance”

Khaled al-Berry · 38 when first published

Novel · 593 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:A young Egyptian marries an older British woman and moves to England, where he comes to know the struggles and relationships of the Arab immigrant community.

IPAF 2011 · Shortlist

Brooklyn Heights

بروكلين هايتس · Brooklyn Heights

Miral al-Tahawy · 42 when first published

Novel · 182 pages · Migration

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

عندما تشيخ الذئاب

'Indama tashikh al-dhi'ab

AITitle translated by AI:“When the Wolves Grow Old”

Jamal Naji · 54 when first published

Novel · 354 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In Amman, one narrator after another tells how people from the city's poor quarters rose to wealth and power among preachers, charities and politicians, while Azmi al-Wajih, at the centre of it all, never speaks.

IPAF 2010 · Shortlist

وراء الفردوس

Wara' al-firdaws

AITitle translated by AI:“Beyond Paradise”

Mansoura Ez Eldin · 33 when first published

Novel · 223 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Salma, an editor at a literary paper in Egypt, starts writing a novel about her well-off rural family to free herself from a past full of painful memories.

IPAF 2010 · Shortlist

A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore

يوم غائم في البر الغربي · Yawm gha'im fi al-barr al-gharbi

Mohamed Mansi Qandil · 63 when first published

Novel · 392 pages · Historical

AIAI-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

The Lady from Tel Aviv

السيدة من تل أبيب · Al-Sayyida min Tal Abib

Rabai al-Madhoun · 64 when first published

Novel · Politics, Migration

AIAI-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 2010 · Shortlist

أمريكا

Amrika

Rabee Jaber · 37 when first published

Novel · 431 pages · Migration, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Early in the twentieth century, Marta sets out alone from Greater Syria for New York to find her husband, who has stopped sending news.

IPAF 2009 · Shortlist

المترجم الخائن

Al-Mutarjim al-kha'in

AITitle translated by AI:“The Treacherous Translator”

Fawaz Haddad · 61 when first published

Novel · 488 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Hamed, a literary translator, is branded a traitor for his unorthodox ideas about what translation is for, and is drawn into a web of writers, journalists and critics.

IPAF 2009 · Shortlist

The Scents of Marie-Claire

روائح ماري كلير · Rawa'ih Mari Klir

Habib Selmi · 57 when first published

Novel · 223 pages · Love

AIAI-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

Time of White Horses

زمن الخيول البيضاء · Zaman al-khuyul al-bayda'

Ibrahim Nasrallah · 53 when first published

Novel · 634 pages · Historical, Family, Politics

AIAI-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

The American Granddaughter

الحفيدة الأميركية · Al-Hafida al-amrikiyya

Inaam Kachachi · 56 when first published

Novel · 182 pages · War, Family, Migration

AIAI-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

Hunger

جوع · Ju'

Mohamed El-Bisatie · 70 when first published

Novel · 117 pages · Family

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

أرض اليمبوس

Ard al-Yambus

AITitle translated by AI:“Land of Limbo”

Elias Farkouh · 59 when first published

Novel · 233 pages · Autofiction, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Lying ill in hospital, a teacher and journalist who is about to become a full-time writer looks back on a life spent on the margins of politics, love and the wars of his region.

IPAF 2008 · Shortlist

June Rain

مطر حزيران · Matar Huzayran

Jabbour Douaihy · 57 when first published

Novel · 304 pages · Historical, Family

AIAI-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

In Praise of Hatred

مديح الكراهية · Madih al-karahiya

Khaled Khalifa · 42 when first published

Novel · 299 pages · Politics, Family, Coming of age

AIAI-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

أنتعل الغبار وأمشي

Anta'il al-ghubar wa-amshi

AITitle translated by AI:“I Wear the Dust and Walk”

May Menassa · 67 when first published

Novel · 253 pages · War, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A girl who loses her mother and her voice when gunmen attack her Lebanese village grows up mute, and writes down in a secret notebook everything she cannot say.

IPAF 2008 · Shortlist

Cairo Swan Song

تغريدة البجعة · Taghridat al-baja'a

Mekkawi Said · 52 when first published

Novel · Love, Politics

AIAI-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.