Book Club

Book Club: Uld Mohamadi Bah's 'Birds of Nabaa' is a quintessential Mauritanian tale about a Sufi's modern asceticism. Travelling from his village in Mauritania to Europe, the Gulf, and Africa, the narrator's wanderings help reinforce his humanity.

Book Club: While liberal anti-racists obsess over diversity; new forms of racism have seeped into the routines of liberal regimes. Arun Kundnani's 'What Is Antiracism?' instead theorises an anti-racism that is radical, universal, and anti-capitalist.

Book Club: With main character Nazia, dead, readers put the puzzle pieces of her life together through the perspectives of her loved ones.

Book Club: Prominent French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu's latest book is a comprehensive exploration of the Middle East's political history, from the split-up of the Roman Empire in 395AD to the counter-revolutions of the present-day.

Book Club: Poet, activist, organiser and now author Sara M Saleh is a woman of many talents. Speaking to The New Arab, Sara talks about the inspiration behind her debut novel 'Songs for the Dead and the Living' and how multiplicities come into play.

Book Club: Jaber Baker and Ugur Umit Ungor's 'Syrian Gulag' presents a compelling case for accountability in Syria looking into the different prisons and charting the regime’s repression from 1970 until the 2020s through years of detailed research.

Book Club: The first generation to migrate are often referred to as the 'silent generation' for their resilience to succeed, whatever the cost. In Faïza Guène's latest novel, Discretion, she unpacks two generations of Algerian women living in France.

Book Club: The plight of Bedouins living in Palestine is seldom written about in novel form. Sheikha Helawy, herself hailing from a Bedouin town, has written a collection of 18 short stories that unveils the culture of Bedouin women in modernity.

Book Club: In Yemen In Crisis, Helen Lackner covers the recent history of Yemen and the current conflict in the country with special attention to the environmental crisis and shortcomings of humanitarian aid efforts. The New Arab talks to the author.

Book Club: The violent intersection of politics and language has forced Palestinian free speech into a corner. Rebecca Ruth Gould's 'Erasing Palestine' chronicles this erasure of Palestinian narratives from Israeli occupation to IHRA antisemitism.