Fiction

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Good Girl

In Berlin’s underground techno scene, nineteen-year-old Nila is searching for freedom, belonging, and a voice of her own. Born in Germany to Afghan refugee parents, she moves between her family’s expectations and the city’s intoxicating nightlife, trying to escape the weight of her past and imagine a different future. When she meets Marlowe, an older American writer whose fading literary fame opens the door to a world of artistic possibility, Nila becomes drawn into a relationship that challenges her independence. Meanwhile, beneath Berlin’s cosmopolitan surface, racism and unresolved historical tensions threaten the fragile worlds she inhabits. Sensual, restless, and deeply perceptive, Good Girl explores the contradictions of growing up between cultures—and the messy, liberating struggle to decide who you want to become.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories

The Cemetery of Untold Stories

What happens to the stories we never tell? When celebrated novelist Alma Cruz retires, she returns to her family’s homeland, the Dominican Republic, and creates an unusual resting place for her unfinished manuscripts: a cemetery where forgotten characters can finally be laid to rest. But the stories refuse to remain buried. As their characters begin speaking back to their creator, hidden histories, family secrets, and forgotten lives emerge from the pages. Blending magical realism with Dominican history, Julia Alvarez explores who gets to tell a story, whose voices are silenced, and whether we ever truly own the stories we create. A moving celebration of the power of storytelling, this novel reminds us that even the tales we try to bury can find their way into the light.

Dominican Republic 2025

The Hidden Light of Objects

The Hidden Light of Objects

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.

Liquid

A brilliant Iranian-Indian American scholar has a PhD from UCLA, an underwhelming academic career, and a growing fear that she has failed to achieve the comfortable life her immigrant parents worked so hard to build. When her best friend jokingly suggests she marry rich, she takes the idea seriously, embarking on a summer of one hundred dates with wealthy Angelenos. Armed with spreadsheets and intellectual confidence, she approaches romance as another problem to solve. But when a family emergency takes her to Tehran, an unexpected queer attraction challenges her carefully constructed plans and forces her to reconsider what she wants from love, family, and her future. Witty, provocative, and deeply perceptive, Liquid explores the contradictions of ambition, the pressures of cultural expectations, and the search for belonging between different worlds. With sharp humour and emotional honesty, it turns the familiar romantic comedy into a thoughtful examination of identity, desire, and the lives we imagine for ourselves.

United States 2025

The Lord

Soraya Antonius

In British-ruled Palestine, a charismatic young man named Tareq becomes a figure of mystery and resistance. After leaving school, he travels from village to village as a magician, performing astonishing feats that earn him a devoted following. But beneath his extraordinary reputation lies a growing defiance of British colonial authority. As unrest spreads across Palestine and the 1936 Arab Revolt approaches, Tareq’s influence attracts the attention of Challis, a ruthless British police chief determined to crush the resistance. Decades later, amid the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an English missionary recalls the young man whose fate became intertwined with the history of a nation. Rich in historical detail and vivid depictions of Palestinian society before the Nakba, The Lord explores resistance, colonial power, and the lives of people caught in the struggle for their homeland.

The Slightest Green

The Slightest Green

When Intisar Jaber receives news that her estranged father is dying, she leaves her life in Chicago behind and returns to Palestine, a land she barely remembers but has never entirely escaped. Her father, Hafez, abandoned her family decades earlier to join the resistance, only to spend the rest of his life imprisoned. Now, standing in her ancestral village, Intisar must confront the complicated legacy he left behind and the unfamiliar feeling of being a stranger in her own homeland. Meanwhile, her grandmother Sundus fights to protect the family home from those seeking to take it away. As the two women navigate grief, fractured family ties, and the enduring struggle to preserve their inheritance, Intisar faces a difficult choice between the life she has built in America and the history calling her back. The Slightest Green is a moving multigenerational novel about Palestinian identity, displacement, and the powerful connection between people and the land they call home.

Salutation Road

Salutation Road

Twenty-three-year-old Sirad Ali feels trapped between the life she has inherited and the future she dreams of. Living in South London, she struggles to support her mother and younger brother while carrying the wound of her father’s abandonment. But one ordinary morning, her commute takes an extraordinary turn: she finds herself transported to an alternate version of Mogadishu, where her family has lived an entirely different life. There, she encounters Ubah, her double—the woman she might have become had her parents never fled Somalia during the civil war. When Ubah later appears in London, the boundaries between their worlds begin to blur. Blending magical realism with an intimate exploration of migration and family, Salutation Road asks a haunting question: How different would we be if our families had made different choices?

Far Away from Here

Far Away from Here

Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, three young Black American Muslims find themselves confronting the losses, choices, and secrets that have shaped their lives. Fatima returns to the city she fled after the murder of her fiancé, reluctantly taking on the care of his dying mother. Tahani, a single mother who has struggled to reconcile her independence with her religious upbringing, longs for a life that leaves room for her own ambitions. Meanwhile, Saif must face his troubled past and the role he played in his cousin’s death. As their lives intertwine once more, all three must reckon with grief, faith, and the possibility of a different future. A tender, thought-provoking novel about community, belonging, and the courage to reclaim your own story.

United States 2025

Honey Hunger

Set in the mountainous countryside of Oman, Honey Hunger follows Azzan, a solitary beekeeper whose devotion to bees and the search for wild honey offers him a refuge from disappointment and personal turmoil. When he encounters Thamna, a shepherd woman with honey-coloured eyes, he becomes captivated by her, opening the possibility of connection in a life marked by loneliness and troubled relationships. As Azzan navigates family expectations, alcohol addiction, and the fragile bonds between people, his work with bees becomes a source of purpose and healing. Yet an unexpected accident threatens to destroy everything he has built, forcing him to confront loss and the uncertainty of starting over. Through vivid descriptions of Oman’s mountains, villages, and delicate ecosystems, Alqasmi creates an intimate portrait of a community whose lives are deeply intertwined with the natural world. The novel explores longing, resilience, and the complicated relationship between humans and their environment, revealing how the pursuit of something as precious as honey can reflect a deeper hunger for meaning and belonging.

Dealing with the Dead

Dealing with the Dead

Alain Mabanckou

In the Congolese coastal city of Pointe-Noire, twenty-two-year-old Liwa Ekimakingaï wakes up in a cemetery, discovering that he has been dead for three days. Dressed forever in a pair of flared purple trousers, he finds himself among the cemetery’s other residents, whose extraordinary stories reveal a world where the boundary between the living and the dead is surprisingly thin. Unable to remember exactly how he died, Liwa sets out to revisit his past and uncover the truth behind his mysterious death. His journey takes him back to his childhood, his beloved grandmother, and the events surrounding his final night. As memories and rumours begin to converge, a darker picture emerges of a society shaped by corruption, political violence, and the pursuit of wealth and power. Blending African spiritual traditions, surreal humour, and social satire, Mabanckou creates a fantastical portrait of contemporary Congolese life. Beneath its playful, ghostly premise, the novel asks who controls the stories of the dead—and whether justice remains possible after life has ended.

Congo, Democratic Republic 2025

The Anniversary

The Anniversary

Can you walk away from your family and never look back? Ten years after cutting all contact with his parents, an unnamed narrator reflects on the childhood and family life he left behind. His father ruled the household through violence, intimidation, and fear, while his mother quietly endured her husband’s control, gradually disappearing into the background of her own life. As the narrator revisits these painful memories, he begins to understand the cost of silence and the complicated ties that bind children to their parents. Both an intimate family portrait and a sharp critique of patriarchal power, The Anniversary asks whether breaking away from those who raised us is an act of betrayal—or a necessary step toward freedom.

The Man of Middling Height

The Man of Middling Height

What if society’s deepest prejudices were based not on gender, but on height? In The Man of Middling Height, Jordanian author Fadi Zaghmout imagines an alternative world divided between two groups: tall people and short people. Height determines social status, personal freedom, romantic possibilities, and the roles individuals are expected to perform. Those who fall outside this rigid binary face exclusion and discrimination. The story follows a short dressmaker whose life changes when she meets Tallan, a man of middling height who occupies an uncomfortable position in a society that recognizes only two categories. As their forbidden romance develops, they must confront the social rules that dictate whom they can love and how they are permitted to live. Other characters challenge these conventions in different ways, revealing the contradictions and injustices underpinning their world. Through speculative fiction and biting social satire, Zaghmout examines how societies construct hierarchies and use arbitrary differences to justify inequality. By transforming familiar debates about gender, sexuality, and power into a story about height, he invites readers to question the assumptions that shape their own understanding of identity and belonging.

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