Murjana
Iraq

Murjana

by Ghada Karmi

Love & Passion Historical Fiction 2025

Summary

Baghdad, 830 CE: a city of dazzling scholarship, artistic brilliance, and dangerous political divisions. When the Abbasid caliph falls gravely ill, his physician discovers that the cause is an overwhelming passion for Murjana, a beautiful young woman from a Shia family. Their marriage promises to unite two hearts, but threatens to ignite conflict in a society divided by religious loyalties and competing ambitions. As palace intrigue, jealousy, and vengeance gather around the couple, Ghada Karmi brings medieval Baghdad to life in a richly imagined historical novel about forbidden love and the destructive power of sectarian hatred. Inspired by the intellectual and cultural world of the Abbasid era, Murjana asks whether love can overcome the divisions that history keeps creating.

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Country
Iraq
Asia
About the author
Ghada Karmi
Ghada Karmi

Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian-British physician, academic, writer, and political commentator born in Jerusalem in 1939. Her family was forced to leave Palestine during the Nakba in 1948, eventually settling in England, where she grew up and pursued her education. She studied medicine at the University of Bristol and later earned a doctorate in the history of Arabic medicine from the University of London. After practising as a doctor, specialising in the health of migrants and refugees, she became an influential scholar of Middle Eastern politics and Palestinian history. Her work explores displacement, exile, identity, and the enduring consequences of the loss of homeland. Her acclaimed memoir In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story (2002) recounts her childhood in Jerusalem and her experience of growing up in Britain. Other notable works include Return: A Palestinian Memoir (2015) and One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel (2023).

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Details
Published
2025
Author
Ghada Karmi