Hanan Al-Shaykh Book order (chronological)

The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh.

Kamila is nine years old when she is taken from the poverty of her childhood village in southern Lebanon to Beirut. She has never learned to read or write though she longs to go to school. Stories, poetry and film are her passion - and a beautiful boy called Muhammad. They fall in love before Kamila is forced into an arranged marriage, despite her tears and screams. She is only fourteen years old. On her wedding night her first daughter is conceived; four years later, Hanan, their second, is born. Kamila and Muhammad continue to see each other in secret, risking their lives. It is eight years before Kamila can bring herself to divorce her husband, as to do so means leaving her daughters behind. Beautifully evoking the dusty streets of Beirut and life in Lebanon, this is a heartbreaking memoir of an extraordinary woman.

Four strangers meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to London: Amira, a canny Moroccan prostitute; Lamis, a 30-year old Iraqi divorcee; Nicholas, an English expert on Islamic art; and Samir, a Lebanese man who is delivering a monkey on a mission he doesn’t fully understand. Once safely on British soil, Lamis and Nicholas fall in love, Samir chases after blond British youths, and Amira reinvents herself as a princess, the better to lure clients at the best London hotels. Through the city and across cultural borders, Only in London wittily portrays the smells, sounds, and sights of London’s lively Arab neighorhoods, as well as the freedoms the city both offers and withholds from its immigrants.

Al-Shaykh Hanan has confirmed her standing as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. Now, in her new novel--available in English for the first time--she writes her farewell to Beirut, a city that no longer exists as she knew it. What emerges is an intimate, engaging portrait and a delicately interwoven pattern of events and characters.

Zwei Araberinnen, eine Amerikanerin und eine westlich orientierte Libanesin schildern, wie sie mit den Zwängen der streng patriarchalischen islamischen Gesellschaft umgehen.

"Little is known of what life is like for contemporary Arab women living in the Middle East. One of the few literary voices speaking out from that still closed society is Hanan al-Shaykh, whose novel The Story of Zahra was banned in most Arab countries. Now available for the first time in the U.S. is her newest novel, a story of four women treated to every luxury but freedom."-- Back cover