Muslim Authors Highlight
Check out these books written by Muslim authors!
All my rage
Tahir, Sabaa, author
2023
A family extending from Pakistan to California, deals with generations of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness
As long as the lemon trees grow
Katouh, Zoulfa, author
2022
Eighteen-year-old Salama Kassab, a pharmacy student volunteering at the hospital in Homs, is desperate to find passage on a refugee boat for herself and her pregnant best friend, but first she must learn to see the events around her for what they are - not a war, but a revolution.
Between two moons : a novel
Abdel Gawad, Aisha, author
2023
"It's the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents' roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, whose mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance. Meanwhile, outside the family's apartment, a storm is brewing in Bay Ridge. A raid on a local business sparks a protest that brings the Arab community together, and a senseless act of violence threatens to tear them apart. 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"-- Provided by publisher.
The foghorn echoes
Ramadan, Ahmad Danny, author
2022
Syria, 2003. A blooming romance leads to a tragic accident when Hussam's father catches him acting on his feelings for his best friend, Wassim. Ten years later, Hussam is living an openly gay life in Vancouver. Wassim is living on the streets of Damascus, having abandoned a wife and child and a charade he could no longer keep up. The past continues to reverberate through the present as Hussam and Wassim come face to face with heartache, history, drag queens, border guards, and ghosts both literal and figurative.
Girls of Riyadh : a novel
Ṣāniʻ, Rajāʼ ʻAbd Allāh
2007
This debut novel, banned in the author's own country, reveals the social, romantic, and sexual tribulations of four young women from the elite classes of Saudi Arabia. Every week after Friday prayers, the anonymous narrator sends an email to the female subscribers of her online chat group. In fifty such emails over the course of a year, we witness the tragicomic reality of four university students negotiating their love lives, their professional success, and their rebellions, large and small, against their cultural traditions.
Hana Khan carries on
Jalaluddin, Uzma, author.
2021
When Hana's mysterious aunt and her teenage cousin arrive from India for a surprise visit, they draw Hana into a long-buried family secret. A hate-motivated attack on their neighbourhood complicates the situation further, as does Hana's growing attraction for Aydin, the young owner of the rival halal restaurant - who might not be a complete stranger after all. As life on the Golden Crescent unravels, Hana must learn to use her voice, draw on the strength of her community and decide what her future should be.
Her first Palestinian : and other stories
Teebi, Saeed, author.
2022
Saeed Teebi's intense, engrossing stories plunge into the lives of characters grappling with their experiences as Palestinian immigrants to Canada. These taut and compelling stories engage the immigrant experience and reflect the Palestinian diaspora with grace and insight.
Huda F cares?
Fahmy, Huda, author, illustrator
2023
This summer's exercise in Fahmy family sisterly bonding involves a trip to Disney World--which seems like it is headed for disaster when Huda gets into a fight with a boy making fun of her hijab.
If an Egyptian cannot speak English : a novel
Naga, Noor, author
2022
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a cafe in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants "returning" to a country she's never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire--for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other--takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.
Love from Mecca to Medina
Ali, S. K., author
2022
On the trip of a lifetime, Adam and Zayneb must find their way back to each other in this surprising and romantic sequel to Love from A to Z. Adam and Zayneb. Perfectly matched. Painfully apart. Adam is in Doha, Qatar, making a map of the Hijra, a historic migration from Mecca to Medina, and worried about where his next paycheck will come from. Zayneb is in Chicago, where school and extracurricular stresses are piling on top of a terrible frenemy situation, making her miserable. Then a marvel occurs: Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia. But the trip is nothing like what they expect, from the appearance of Adam's former love interest in their traveling group to the anxiety gripping Zayneb when she's supposed to be spiritual. As one wedge after another drives them apart while they make their way through rites in the holy city, Adam and Zayneb start to wonder: was their meeting just an oddity after all? Or can their love transcend everything else like the greatest marvels of the world?
The mismatch : a novel
Jafari, Sara, author
2021
"For a woman who just wants to get her first kiss out of the way, a young rugby star her parents would never approve of seems like the perfect mismatch. But she has no idea how intoxicating one kiss can be... Soraya Nazari is ready to make her mark on the world--if only she knew what that was going to be. Caught between her strict Muslim family's expectations and her own, Soraya can't help feeling like a fish out of water as she navigates life as a new college graduate. And there is the small matter that Soraya has never been kissed at the age of twenty-one. If she can tick that off the list, surely everything else will fall into place. Enter Magnus Evans: rugby player, man-about-town, and everything Soraya's parents would disapprove of. She knows she could never fall in love with Magnus--and for that reason he is perfect for now. But as Soraya spends more time with Magnus, she wonders if she has written him off too quickly. Maybe in the process of getting to know him better, Soraya will finally start to understand herself"--Provided by publisher.
Queen of the tiles
Hanna Alkaf, author.
2022
Fifteen-year-old Najwa Bakri is forced to investigate the mysterious death of her best friend and Scrabble Queen, Trina, a year after the fact when her Instagram comes back to life with cryptic posts and messages.
Radiant fugitives
Ahmed, Nawaaz, author
2021
Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite being exiled by her father after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother and her devoutly religious sister. Instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding, and complicated layers of love - a tapestry of emotions as riveting and disparate as the era itself.
River spirit : a novel
Aboulela, Leila, 1964- author.
2023
An enchanting narrative of the years leading up to the British conquest of Sudan in 1898, and a deeply human look at the tensions between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. Leila Aboulela gives us the unforgettable story of a people who gained independence from foreign rule through their willpower, subterfuge, and sacrifice. Through the voices of seven men and women whose fates grow inextricably linked, illuminating a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism.
Salaam, with love
Beg, Sara Sharaf.
2022
Dua struggles to find her place in her conservative family's household, but as she spends the month of Ramadan with her cousin in Queens, Dua finds herself learning more about her faith, relationships, and place in the world.
A tempest of tea
Faizal, Hafsah, author.
2024
"On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it--and she can't do the job alone. Calling on some of the city's most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it"-- Dust jacket flap.
The thirty names of night : a novel
Joukhadar, Zeyn, author
2020
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother's ghost has begun to visit him each evening. The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's-and his grandmother's--in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his community that he never knew. Following his mother's ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
The unquiet dead
Khan, Ausma Zehanat, author
2015
Detective Esa Khattack and his partner, Detective Rachel Getty, investigate the death of a local man who may have been a Bosnian war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.
What strange paradise
El Akkad, Omar, 1982- author
2021
Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers - all desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vanna: a teenage girl who lives inside her own sense of homelessness. In alternating chapters, we learn the story of the boy's life and how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the girl and boy as they make their way toward a vision of safety.
When we were sisters : a novel
Asghar, Fatimah, author
2022
"In this heartrending debut, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her "crybaby" younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself, on her own terms. As Kausar grows up, she must contend with the collision of her private and public worlds, and choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow, and codependency she's known or carve out a new path for herself. WHEN WE WERE SISTERS tenderly examines the bonds and fractures of sisterhood, names the perils of being three Muslim American girls alone against the world, and ultimately illustrates how those who've lost everything might still make homes in each other"-- Provided by publisher