Ruqayya was only thirteen when the Nakba came to her village in Palestine in 1948. The massacre in Tantoura drove her from her home and from everything she had ever known. She had not left her village before, but she would never return. Now an old woman, Ruqayya looks back on a long life in exile, one that has taken her to Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and given her children and grandchildren. Through her depth of experience and her indomitable spirit, we live her love of her land, her family, and her people, and we feel the repeated pain of loss and of diaspora.

Set in the late nineteenth century on a mythical island off the coast of Yemen, Radwa Ashour's Siraaj: An Arab Tale tells the poignant story of a mother and son as they are drawn inextricably into a revolt against their island's despotic sultan.

Amina, a baker in the sultan's palace, anxiously awaits her son's return from a long voyage at sea, fearful that the sea has claimed Saï d just as it did his father and grandfather. Saï d, left behind in Alexandria by his ship as the British navy begins an attack on the city, slowly begins to make his way home, witnessing British colonial oppression along the way.

Saï d's return brings Amina only a short-lived peace. The lessons he learned from the Egyptians' struggle against the British have radicalized him. When Saï d learns the island's slave population is planning a revolt against the sultan's tyrannical rule, both he and Amina are soon drawn in.

Beautifully rendered from Arabic into English by Barbara Romaine, Radwa Ashour's novella speaks of the unity that develops among varied peoples as they struggle against a common oppressor and illuminates the rich cultures of both the Arab and African inhabitants of the island. Sub-Saharan African culture is a subject addressed by few Arabic novelists, and Radwa Ashour's novella does much to fill that void.

A powerful novel of life in the mixed culture that existed in Southern Spain before the expulsion of the Arabs and Jews. Radwa Ashour skillfully weaves a history of Granadan rule and an Arabic world into a novel that evokes cultural loss and the disappearance of a vanquished population. The novel follows the family of Abu Jaafar, the bookbinder--his wife, widowed daughter-in-law, her two children, and his two apprentices--as they witness Christopher Columbus and his entourage in a triumphant parade featuring exotic plants and animals, and human captives from the New World. Embedded in the narrative is the preparation for the marriage of Saad, one of the apprentices, and Saleema, Abu Jaafar's granddaughter--a scenario that is elegantly revealed in a number of parallel scenes. As the new rulers of Granada confiscate books, and officials burn the collected volumes, Abu Jaafur quietly moves his rich library out of town. Persecuted Muslims fight to form an independent government, but increasing economic and cultural pressures on the Arabs of Spain and Christian rulers culminate in Christian conversions and Muslim uprisings. A tale that is both vigorous and heartbreaking, this novel will appeal to general readers of Spanish and Arabic literature as well as anyone interested in Christian-Muslim relations.

"Midnight and Other Poems" is the first full-length poetry collection to be published in the UK by this remarkable Palestinian writer, previously known to English-language readers for his highly-acclaimed autobiography "I Saw Ramallah" (Bloomsbury, 2004). Mourid Barghouti has spent many years in exile and his long poem "Midnight" is a rich montage of images of the land of his birth and the strong emotional responses to which these images give rise.Here, anger, frustration and despair are juxtaposed with yearning and tenderness in Barghouti's powerful and evocative account of occupation, violence and oppression. The shorter poems which comprise the second half of the book are, by turns, dramatic and hard-hitting, contemplative and reflective, and together present an equally powerful and graphic picture of the poet's homeland. In Radwa Ashour's excellent translation, and with a helpful introduction by Guy Mannes-Abbott who recorded a number of conversations with the poet over a period of several weeks, this selection of Mourid Barghouti's poems marks an important addition to the body of Arabic literature available to English-language readers world-wide.