LibraryAware Top 10 North African Authors

The Automobile Club of Egypt
by 'Alaa Al Aswany

The beating death of a once-respected Egyptian landowner turned servant in a luxury club subjects his widow and sons to poverty and turbulent politics that force the club's oppressed employees to make a life-risking choice. By the award-winning author of The Yacoubian Building.

Cairo Modern
by Naguib Mahfouz

In 1930s Cairo, Mahgub agrees to marry the mistress of a high government official in return for a job, discovering that his wife-to-be is Ihsan--his best friend's beautiful former girlfriend, a poor student whose life has been ruined by her seductiveness--and the newlyweds become partners in a precarious plot to make their way in Cairo's high society and outwit their ill fortune.

Chronicle of a Last Summer
by Yasmine El Rashidi

A woman in Cairo reflects on three pivotal summers of her life, including when she was a 6-year-old unable to ask questions, an idealistic college student in the volatile Mubarak period and an adult in the aftermath of Mubarak's overthrow.

The Divinities: A Crane and Drake Novel
by Parker Bilal

When two bodies are found brutally murdered on a building site in Battersea, Detective Sergeant Calil Drake is first on the scene. He sees an opportunity: to solve a high-profile case, and to repair his reputation after a botched undercover operation almost ended his promising career in the Violent Crimes Unit. Assigned to work with the enigmatic forensic psychologist Dr Rayhana Crane, and on the hunt for an elusive killer, Drake’s investigations lead down the dark corridors of the past—to their military service in Iraq and the destruction they witnessed there. With a community poised on the brink of violence and their lives on the line, Crane and Drake must work together to stop the killer before vengeance is unleashed.

Elsewhere, Home
by Leila Aboulela

The first story collection from the New York Times Notable author since winning the Caine Prize offers a rich tableau of life as an immigrant abroad, attempting to navigate the conflicts of assimilation and difference in an unfamiliar world.

Harraga
by Boualem Sansal

Grudgingly taking her absent brother's flamboyant and pregnant girlfriend into her home in Algeria, long-time recluse Lamia comes to love the rebellious teen, who she worriedly searches for when the latter runs away into a hostile, fundamentalism-driven outside world.

In the Country of Men
by Hisham Matar

On a hot day in Tripoli, Libya, in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother while his father is away on business, except that he is sure he has just seen his father, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses, the first portent of grave danger and a sinister, previously unsuspected world.

Nadia's Song
by Soheir Khashoggi

After a tragic romance with her wealthy employer's son renders her a heartbroken single mother, servant girl Karima Ismail eventually achieves stardom as one of Egypt's most famous singers, but finds her life shattered by her daughter's disappearance.

The Other Americans
by Laila Lalami

The suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant impacts the lives of a diverse cast of characters including his jazz-composer daughter, an undocumented witness and an Iraqi War veteran. By the award-winning author of The Moor's Account.

The Swallows of Kabul
by Yasmina Khadra

Their lives as a diplomat and lawyer frozen by the ascendancy of the Taliban, Moshen and Zunaira find their situation descending into nightmarish proportions when Zunaira is arrested and condemned to death, an occurrence through which she comes to know veteran and jailer Atiq, who is embittered by the Taliban's cruelty and his wife's terminal illness.