Seriously when Bethanne from @dearbookmaven & Hannah Oliver Depp from @loyaltybooks were raving about "When No One Is Watching" by Alyssa Cole on Monday, they were SPOT ON — It. Is. So. Good! —No wonder it was nearly on every list of best 2020 books.

Chilling thriller. Had to continuously stop reading to catch my breath and reassure myself that it’s fiction because EVERYTHING about it felt uncomfortably close to something that could actually happen ‘when no one is watching’.

Won’t give details for fear I’d be giving it away. However, the book’s jacket describes it as a thriller in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighbourhood takes on a sinister new meaning after a push to ‘revitalise’ the community may be more deadly than advertised, when born & raised Brooklyn resident Sydney Green observes that her neighbourhood seems to change every time she blinks and the neighbours she’s known all her life are disappearing. So, where do people actually go when gentrification pushes them out?

In the epigraph, Alyssa Cole quotes W.E.B Bu Bois: ‘One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over...the difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.’
​
I feel an imminent film 😎

Can’t wait to receive this wonderful book by the very inspiring Alya Mooro to add to my shelves. Her interview with Afikra on this miserably cold & wet Virginia day was nuanced, engaging & really fun.

‘The Greater Freedom’ by Alya Mooro is all about being who you really want to be free from restriction or fear of repercussions. Part memoir & part social exploration, the author talks about the pull she felt growing between two cultures (Arab & British). Through personal experience & interviews with other Middle Eastern women she gives voice to women under pressure to conform to society’s ideals of how a woman should look & behave, what she should want and be.

The book was released in 2019. As a follow up the author has recently launched a newsletter entitled ‘The Greater Conversation Newsletter' - a newsletter centring female Middle Eastern experiences. It’s awesome!

And if you’re into podcasts, she’s got one of those with co-presenter Nasri Atallah called ‘Bootleg Magic’

Here are the eight titles that have caught the interests of the BookFabulous family over & over this month. We’re positive you’ll love them too.

Top shelf (L-R)
1. “A Bed for the King’s Daughter’ by Shahla Ujayli, translated by Sawad Hussein, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Univer
2. “We Free the Stars” by Hafsah Faizal, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
3. “Barra and Zaman: Reading Egyptian Modernity in Shadi Abdel Salam’s The Mummy” by Youssef Rakha (Palgrave Pivot)

Middle shelf (L-R)
1. “Bride of the Sea” by Eman Quotah, Tin House
2. “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain’ by George Saunders, Random House

Bottom shelf (L-R)
1. “Aftershocks” by Nadia Owusu,  Simon & Schuster
2. “Burnt Sugar” by Avni Doshi, Penguin
3. “The ardent Swarm” by Yamen Manai, Amazon Publishing

​If you’ve asked yourself a million times over why people vote the way they do with what appears to be little disregard for obvious facts or basic moral values, then "Why Do They Vote That Way?" by Jonathan Haidt is one book you’ll want to pick up.

To understand what drives the rift that divides the populace between liberal & conservative the world over, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has spent 25 years examining the moral foundations that undergird & inform two differing world views: the political left & right who each place different values of importance on order, care, fairness, loyalty, authority & liberty. And how these ingrained moral systems (& their ranking) have deeply estranged conservatives & liberals from one another.

This 53-page Vintage Short Penguin Random House is a standalone published excerpt from the author’s 2013 book ‘The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion’ (530 pages) in which he writes about how he developed ‘The Moral Foundations Theory’ to explain “why people in different societies & different social classes often disagree about what is right and wrong” in a bid to understanding “the miracle of human cooperation.”

Available ONLY as an ebook. I purchased my copy from Books-A-Million

I’ve had ‘Darius the Great Is Not Okay’ by Adib Khorram on my radar since it was first published in 2018. Well, thanks to a buddy read with @teachingtheapocalypse I’m loving this tender Young Adult novel about Darius Keller, an American teenager who identifies as ‘a Fractional Persian’ from his mum’s side. The story centres around his first trip to Iran with his sister and parents to meet his grandparents for the first time. It’s published by Penguin Books and has been optioned for film.

Darius has clinical depression and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents is proving a problem, for one because he speaks better Klingon than he does Farsi. However, the best part of his visit is when he meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and the two become instant friends. Through this friendship specifically (both have father issues) and being in Iran generally (the family, the sights, the food, & taarof), Darius (aka Darioush) begins to feel that he might be much better than okay.
​

​“Summer Brother” by Japp Robben, trans. from the Dutch by David Doherty. World Editions (288p) - released February 9, 2021
 
Jaap Robben’s second novel, translated from the Dutch by David Doherty, is the tender tale of the bond between brothers. Set to release February 2021 by World Editions, “Summer Brother” is the tale of thirteen-year-old Brian, who since his parents’ divorce, lives with his odds job, detached dad, Maurice, in a run-down trailer that they rent from two shady brothers Jean and Brown Henri. A new tenant, Emile, has just moved in to the trailer close to Brian’s. Lucien, Brian’s brother, lives in a group home due to congenital mental and physical disability. His unresponsiveness to his brother’s interactions with him represents Brian with conflicting thoughts on whether his brother actually exists beyond the days when he sees him.
​

​Quickly, things deteriorate not only for Maurice when his landlords threaten to evict him if he does not pay his accumulating rent, but also with Brian, who, as reliable as ever, nonetheless struggles to juggle his duties between keeping a constant eye on his brother and his guilty feelings when he leaves him alone to visit with Selma, never mind the disastrous consequences that incure. His only possible solace in all this is Emile, who he seems to develop an attachment to but Maurice’s instant dislike of Emile only adds embers to a raging novel headed towards what threatens to be a complete and utter scorcher.
 
“Summer Brother” is on some level a very sad, at times distressing novel not only with regards the harsh world that some teenagers exist in, especially when surrounded by damaged role models specifically and disengaged adults generally, but also on how disability impacts the family system as well as society’s response when it comes face to face with it. The disability can consume a disproportionate share of a family's resources of time, energy, and money, so that other individual and family needs go unmet coupled with the guilt when assistance is required, all contributing to marital homes buckling under the pressure as in the case of Brian’s family. That said, though, the novel is an equally warm, humorous, and deeply affective one in which all the characters feel believable.  The writer, and in turn the translator, opts for sparse language and candid humor to handle a novel with sensitive themes centered on disability, sex and even poop-filled diapers, with a respect and a nuance that steers clear of melodrama and stereotype.
 
Readers cannot help but root for Brian and Lucien’s summer and what might prove to be a once in a lifetime chance at creating a shared memory. Despite the shocking end, readers, and this one in particular, are left reminded of the undeniable truth that for love -- a complicated concept in and of itself that people demonstrate differently -- to subsist, the ingredients don’t have to be perfect. “Summer Brother” makes for a perfect Book Club Choice (check out a list of questions by the publisher HERE)
​

Jaap Robben is a poet, playwright, performer, and acclaimed children's author. "You Have Me to Love", his first novel for adults won the 2014 Dutch Booksellers Award, the Dioraphte Prize, and the ANV Award for best Dutch debut. Robben was chosen as one of the featured debut authors at the 2018 Brooklyn Book Festival. "Summer Brother" is a bestseller in the Netherlands and is his second novel.

David Doherty studied English and literary linguistics in the UK before moving to the Netherlands, where he has been translating all manner of Dutch texts since 1996. He was commended by the jury of the 2017 Vondel Translation Prize for Marente de Moor's (The Dutch Maiden) and Jaap Robben's "You Have Me to Love" and was runner-up in 2019 for his translation of "Monte Carlo" by Peter Terrin.

by Rana Asfour

Translated by Joyce Zonana from the French, Tobie Nathan’s part fantastical fable, part realistic history is on the one hand a tempestuous love story between the sensuous dancer & singer Masreya & ruffian turned business man/fixer Zohar. On the other hand it is an account of Cairo’s Jewish community from the early 1920s until its ‘exodus’ in the late 50s.

A story of two lovers unfolds against the backdrop of a country struggling against British occupation, a World War, a crumbling monarchy, Communism vs rising religious fanaticism, a region’s discovery of black oil & Palestine’s partition followed by Arab/Israeli wars that would all together challenge the notion of ‘a real Egyptian’

A compelling all-encompassing tale that uncovers the nitty gritty of people’s daily lives, living peaceably side by side sharing language & superstitions, hopes & dreams, within the Muslim, Coptic & Jewish communities, rich & poor, to weave a closer than ever before picture on the ‘first time, since the Pharaohs of antiquity, Egypt was about to become Egyptian.’

It’s rich, masterfully translated, & complex yet also funny, sensitive and moving. It vibrates with an energy that is in tandem with the vibrancy of a city known to most as ‘Umm el Dunya’ aka ‘Mother of the World’.

Read an excerpt from the 2020 novel published by Seagull Books at The Markaz Review
​

'Unlocking Doors of Cinema' (2019), the first feature-length documentary by Abu Dhabi resident and associate professor at Zayed University, filmmaker and director, Nezar Andary, sheds light on the grand master of Arab auteur cinema, Syrian filmmaker Muhammad Malas. Here's my review published recently in The Markaz Review (click HERE to read)

by Rana Asfour

Long before Covid-19 captured every single headline in early 2020, ‘American Dirt’ by Jeanine Cummins was having its fair/unfair spot in the limelight. Many were up in arms at Macmillan for extending 6 figures to a writer for a story she was later accused ‘was not hers to tell’. Since then the industry & readers have collectively listened, learned & actively pushed for supporting #ownvoices literature while also continuing the debate whether in fact storytelling is for anyone with a story to tell; real or imagined.

Therefore, and to this latter point, I imagine that Simon And Schuster went ahead to release in August 2020, Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s latest ‘The New American’ which much like ‘American Dirt’, tells the story of Central American characters’ plight crossing into ‘American soil’. Although the author in this case is a woman of color, yet she also has no ties to Central America. Her parents did however immigrate from Saudi Arabia to the US when she was a baby & she is currently the founder & creative director of the online digital storytelling project ‘The New American Storytelling Project’ (NASP)

One thing is certain: ‘The New American’ is exquisite literary writing - subdued & measured. Think TV documentary rather than Hollywood blockbuster. It is also a gripping, harrowing & heartbreaking read that brings to the forefront the anguish & ugliness of deportation & immigration. However, it is SO closely similar to ‘American Dirt’ in so many ways that disregarding a comparison is impossible while reading it & that’s what I found jarred my own enjoyment of the book.

‘The New American’ is a novel about Emilio, a young Guatemalan Berkeley college student - a ‘Dreamer’ - who on turning 17 learns a shocking secret his parents had kept from him: he is an undocumented. Caught by ICE following a car accident, he is deported back to Guatemala where no sooner does he arrive than he sets out to return home to California. His treacherous route takes him across thousands of miles & eventually the Sonoran Desert of the US-Mexico border. The story is inspired by interviews with Central American refugees.

by Rana Asfour

by Rana Asfour