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The Trees Are Walking in Alexandria

The Trees Are Walking in Alexandria

Alexandria, 1964. Under President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt is undergoing a political transformation that threatens the city’s cosmopolitan spirit. At the elegant waterfront restaurant Artinos, a diverse circle of friends gathers each evening to discuss art, love, justice, and the future of their country. Among them are Lyda, the restaurant’s owner; Carlo, a charismatic Italian bartender; Anas, a painter; Abbas, a liberal lawyer; and Chantal, the owner of Alexandria’s most popular French bookshop. United by their affection for the city they call home, they struggle to reconcile their ideals with a regime that increasingly demands obedience and suppresses individual freedoms. As businesses are nationalised, suspicions deepen, and political pressure intensifies, their friendships and convictions face an unprecedented test. Through the intertwined lives of these characters, Alaa Al Aswany captures the twilight of a multicultural world, exploring how authoritarianism transforms society and how ordinary people navigate the painful collision between personal loyalties and political power.

Newcomers: Book Three

Newcomers: Book Three

Lojze Kovačič

The war is ending, but for Bubi and his family, peace brings a new set of uncertainties. In Ljubljana, the arrival of communist rule transforms everyday life, leaving people to navigate shifting loyalties, political suspicion, poverty, and the demands of a society being rebuilt from the ground up. Bubi fears that his family’s German-speaking background will make them targets under the new regime. As he witnesses show trials, homelessness, and the upheaval of postwar life, he begins to question the ideals shaping the world around him. At the same time, his interest in art and literature deepens, offering him a way to understand a society caught between collective ambition and individual freedom. In this final volume of his autobiographical masterpiece, Lojze Kovačič captures the contradictions of a country emerging from war, where hope and oppression coexist and the search for belonging remains unresolved.

Uprising

On a sinking island off the coast of Bangladesh, a community of women and children lives under the brutal control of Amma, a madam who buys and sells women trapped in sexual exploitation. The children grow up watching their mothers endure violence and servitude, dreaming of a freedom they can barely imagine. Everything begins to change when Kusum Khan, an educated young woman from the city, arrives on the island and refuses to accept her fate. Inspired by her defiance, the women begin to challenge the system that has kept them captive for generations. Told through the collective voice of the island’s children, Uprising is a powerful story of resistance, female solidarity, and the fight to reclaim one’s life. Against the backdrop of environmental vulnerability and entrenched inequality, Tahmima Anam explores how even the most oppressed can find the courage to imagine another world.

Bangladesh 2026

Daughters of the Same Secret

Daughters of the Same Secret

Haneen Al-Sayegh

In a secluded Druze village in Lebanon’s Mount Lebanon mountains, Amal dreams of a life beyond the boundaries her family and community have drawn for her. Her father, a religious shaykh and blacksmith, believes he has the right to shape the futures of his four daughters. But Amal longs to pursue higher education and study English literature at the American University of Beirut. When a wealthy local businessman offers her a possible way out, she makes a bargain that promises freedom but brings new complications. As marriage, motherhood, and social expectations threaten to consume her ambitions, Amal must find the courage to claim ownership of her life. Poetic and deeply moving, this novel explores the hidden struggles of women caught between tradition and independence, revealing the quiet acts of resistance that can transform generations.

Taipei Story

Rebecca F. Kuang

What if returning to your cultural roots only makes you feel more like a stranger? When college student Lily Chen travels to Taipei for an intensive Chinese-language programme, she hopes to reconnect with the heritage she has never fully understood. Instead, awkward encounters, complicated relationships, and the sudden death of her grandfather leave her questioning everything she thought she knew about her family and herself. As Lily struggles with language, grief, and the silences surrounding her family’s past, she begins to realise that belonging cannot simply be inherited. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Taipei, this intimate coming-of-age novel explores the distance between cultural identity and lived experience—and the difficult search for a place to call home.

Pure Men

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

A viral video captures an enraged crowd in Dakar digging up a dead man’s grave to punish him for being gay. Disturbed by the footage, Ndéné, a French literature professor, begins investigating the life of the man labelled a góor-jigéen—a term used in Senegal for men who defy conventional expectations of masculinity. His search takes him into a hidden world of queer lives, where he encounters both persecution and extraordinary resilience. Although Ndéné initially shares many of the prejudices surrounding him, the people he meets force him to question his own beliefs, identity, and place in society. Set against the tensions between religious conservatism, social conformity, and individual freedom, this provocative novel examines the human cost of intolerance and asks what it truly means to be a man.

Seven Heavens Away

Seven Heavens Away

In Jerusalem, where everyday life unfolds under the shadow of escalating violence, fifteen-year-old Aziz faces a loss that will change everything. After his friend Hassan is killed, Aziz is pulled between grief, loyalty, and the growing political anger surrounding him. His feelings for Dafna, a Jewish girl he works with, further complicate his friendships and force him to question the divisions shaping his world. As his family searches for a way to protect his future, Aziz must confront a difficult choice: how to hold on to love, compassion, and hope when the world seems determined to take them away.

Every Exit Brings You Home

Every Exit Brings You Home

Jamal “Jack” Shaban has built a new life in Chicago, far from the violence that forced him to flee Gaza decades earlier. Now a flight attendant and the unofficial peacemaker of his condominium building, he spends his days resolving neighbours’ disputes while concealing the complicated truths of his own life. His traditional Muslim wife, Dimra, longs for a child, while Jack struggles with the secrets, desires, and regrets that threaten their marriage. When a troubled single mother moves into the building, new tensions awaken memories of a forbidden love affair in Gaza that changed the course of his life. As financial troubles engulf the community and the past resurfaces, Jack must confront the contradictions that define him: devoted husband and restless lover, generous neighbour and troubled survivor. Blending dark humour with heartbreaking reflections on war and displacement, Every Exit Brings You Home explores the meaning of home, the weight of exile, and the extraordinary ways people choose love despite the pain they carry.

Slums of Paradise

Slums of Paradise

In 1970s Sylhet, Bangladesh, eleven-year-old Sumaya grows up sheltered by her family’s wealth, while fifteen-year-old Murshed lives under the shadow of his father’s controversial political loyalties. As the Bangladesh Liberation War tears the country apart, a chance encounter binds their lives together in ways neither could imagine. Four decades later, their children, Hinna and Burhaan, meet at a family gathering. Raised in America, Hinna longs for independence from the traditions governing her future, while Burhaan struggles with the inherited stigma and resentment surrounding his family. Drawn to each other despite the forces working against them, they must confront the secrets, loyalties, and political wounds passed down through generations. Spanning two eras, Slums of Paradise explores how war reshapes families long after the fighting ends, questioning whether love can overcome the weight of history and whether a new generation can escape the mistakes of the past.

Bangladesh 2026

The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks

The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks

Sato Reang enjoys a carefree childhood in a small Javanese town, playing football, fighting crickets, and getting into mischief with his friends. But everything changes when his devout father decides that Sato must become a properly religious boy. Expected to pray regularly, attend the mosque, and follow strict rules of Islamic piety, Sato feels increasingly trapped by a life he never chose. As he grows older, his frustration turns into rebellion: he skips prayers, drinks, steals, and begins setting fires. Yet his defiance is not simply a desire to misbehave; it is an attempt to reclaim ownership of his own life. His relationship with Jamal, a deeply pious boy forced into his company, becomes central to his struggle against the authority imposed upon him. Blending dark humour, absurdity, and psychological insight, Eka Kurniawan explores the tensions between faith and freedom, obedience and individuality. Beneath its mischievous surface lies a darker question: when control becomes oppressive, can rebellion offer genuine liberation, or does it create new forms of destruction?

X Is Where I Am

X Is Where I Am

In this intimate, lyrical novel, a young Spanish writer navigates the overlapping experiences of grief, desire, and complicated love. When twenty-eight-year-old Sara moves from London to Barcelona for a university teaching position, she leaves behind her long-term girlfriend while beginning an intense affair with a woman she calls Girl. At the same time, her mother is dying of cancer in Asturias, forcing Sara to confront the approaching loss of one of the most important relationships in her life. As these emotional worlds collide, she struggles with guilt, longing, and the impossibility of controlling either her own desires or the people she loves. Blending fiction with philosophical reflection, Torres explores the body as a site of pleasure, vulnerability, and suffering. Her prose moves between intimate encounters and meditations on attachment, sexuality, and mortality, capturing the messy contradictions of being human. X Is Where I Am is ultimately a moving exploration of how we continue to love amid loss—and how grief can transform our understanding of ourselves and our relationships.

The Abyss

In the hidden world of India’s professional begging networks, human suffering has become a business. Pothivelu Pandaram is a respected, religious man who has built his prosperity on an appalling trade: he buys and breeds people with physical disabilities, then places them outside temples to beg for money. Among those he exploits are Mangandi Samy, a profoundly disabled man whose haunting songs express a longing for divine love, and others whose lives have been reduced to commodities. Pandaram treats them as possessions rather than human beings, convinced that his success and social standing justify his actions. But when an unexpected transaction disrupts his carefully controlled world, the moral foundations of his existence begin to crumble. Combining dark humour, grotesque realism, and spiritual inquiry, Jeyamohan confronts readers with uncomfortable questions about compassion, exploitation, and human dignity. Rather than offering easy answers, The Abyss challenges us to examine the cruelty people can inflict on one another—and the possibility of liberation even in the most degrading circumstances.