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April is Arab American Heritage Month

April is Arab American Heritage Month! For your next read, why not check out one of these great works of fiction by Arab American authors?

Against the loveless world : a novel

by Susan Abulhawa

From the internationally bestselling author of the "terrifically affecting" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) Mornings in Jenin, a sweeping and lyrical novel that follows a young Palestinian refugee as she slowly becomes radicalized while searching for a better life for her family throughout the Middle East.

The ashfire king

by Chelsea Abdullah

"After fleeing a patricidal prince, legendary merchant Loulie al-Nazari and banished prince Mazen bin Malik find themselves in the realm of jinn. But instead of sanctuary, they find a world on the cusp of collapse. The jinn cities, long sheltered beneaththe Sandsea by the magic of its kings, are sinking. Amid the turmoil, political alliances are forming, and rebellion is on the rise. When Loulie assists a dissenter-one of her bodyguard's old comrades-she puts herself in the center of a centuries-old war. Trapped in a world that isn't her own and wielding magic that belongs to a fallen king, Loulie must decide: Will she carry on someone else's legacy or carve out her own?"

Between two moons : a novel

by Aisha Abdel Gawad

A deeply moving family story about identity, faith, and belonging set in the Muslim immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan. A gorgeously written, intimate family story and a polyphonic portrait of life under the specter of Islamophobia, Between Two Moons challenges the reader to interrogate their own assumptions, asking questions of allegiance to faith, family, and community, and what it means to be a young Muslim in America.

The dream hotel : a novel

by Laila Lalami

After a dream-analysis algorithm predicts that she will harm her husband, Sara is detained in a facility with similarly accused women, where she navigates shifting rules until a new arrival leads her to confront the forces controlling her fate.

Fencing with the king

by Diana Abu-Jaber

Amani discovers a poem on an airmail paper that slipped out of one of her father's books, and becomes determined to learn more about its author, her grandmother, who arrived in Jordan during World War I.

Ms. Marvel : destined

by Saladin Ahmed

Ms. Marvel is back - and she's magnificent! But there's no such thing as business as usual in Jersey City. Aliens are wreaking havoc in Kamala's corner of the world, and they seem weirdly interested in Ms. Marvel...and her family! Kamala is about to face a devastating loss - but with an alien invasion ravaging her neighborhood, she's not going to have much time to grieve. Even if Kamala saves her hometown, will her life ever be the same? And what's all this business about a "Chosen One"? Eisner Award-winner Saladin Ahmed (BLACK BOLT, EXILES) and rising star Minkyu Jung take the reins of one of Marvel's most beloved new characters, with the shocking start of an all-new era!

My friends : a novel

by Hisham Matar

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words - and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zawa - Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety. When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zawa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

The republic of false truths

by Alaa Al-Aswany

From one of the foremost writers in the Arab world comes a new novel banned in his home country, Egypt--a devastating work of fiction about the Egyptian revolution, taking us inside the battle raging between those in power and those prepared to lay downtheir lives in the defense of freedom.

The skin and its girl : a novel

by Sarah Cypher

Faced with a difficult decision, Betty, a young, queer Palestinian American woman finds answers in partially translated notebooks that reveal her late Aunt Nuha's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which she hid from the family, along with much more than that.

The wrong end of the telescope

by Rabih Alameddine

A novel from the National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman is about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.

What strange paradise

by Omar El Akkad

Looking at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child, this dramatic story follows Vänna who comes to the rescue of a 9-year-old Syrian boy who has washed up on the shores of her small island and is determined to do whatever it takes to save him.

You exist too much : a novel

by Zaina Arafat

Told in vignettes that occur in American and Middle East settings, a debut novel follows the experiences of a young Palestinian-American who is marginalized for her sexual orientation before the traumas of her past drive her toward self-destructive impulses.