The Hidden Light of Objects
Kuwait

The Hidden Light of Objects

by Mai Al-Nakib

Society & Class Fiction Short Stories 2025

Summary

An ordinary object can hold an extraordinary past. In this award-winning collection of interconnected stories, Mai Al-Nakib illuminates the private lives of people across the Middle East, where personal memories intertwine with war, political upheaval, and shifting cultural identities. A young girl bears the name Amerika in a country growing increasingly hostile toward the West; a Palestinian teenager is drawn into a disastrous act of violence; and a Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after years of captivity in Iraq. Beneath the headlines, Al-Nakib finds the intimate moments that define us: love, betrayal, forgiveness, and the fragile hope of beginning again.

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About the author
Mai Al-Nakib
Mai Al-Nakib

Mai Al-Nakib is a Kuwaiti writer and academic whose work explores the cultural, political, and personal complexities of life in the Middle East. Born in Kuwait, she spent her early childhood in London, Edinburgh, and St. Louis, Missouri, before returning to Kuwait. She earned a PhD in English literature from Brown University and spent twenty years teaching English and comparative literature at Kuwait University, where her academic interests included feminism, citizenship, and postcolonial studies. Her debut collection, The Hidden Light of Objects (2014), won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award, making it the first short-story collection to receive the prize. Her debut novel, An Unlasting Home (2022), explores generations of women and the tensions between personal freedom, religion, and social expectations in Kuwait. She continues to write fiction and essays, bringing the region’s overlooked personal histories into focus.

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Details
Published
2025
Author
Mai Al-Nakib