Books Set in the Middle East
Whether you found this post looking for novels set in the Middle East or are participating in our Book Voyage reading challenge, we hope you find a great book on our list.

Literary Themes in Middle East Books
This geographical region of the world, which covers portions of Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa, has been of great importance in history for thousands of years. Well known for its ancient civilizations, including Ancient Egypt, the Persian Empire, and the Babylonian Empire, three major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It can be very challenging to truly understand the religious and political dynamics of this part of the globe. While no one book about the Middle East can carry the weight of explaining everything there is to know, especially in light of the tragic ongoing conflicts in the region, we’ve worked hard to curate a wide variety of books, with an emphasis on works written by authors native to this region.
Genres & Countries Covered by This List
Our list of books set in the Middle East includes historical fiction, contemporary fiction, memoirs, and travelogues that will shed light on both the challenges and beauty of modern-day life in this corner of the world.
For purposes of the Book Voyage reading challenge, we consider the Middle East to include: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kurdistan (an autonomous region of Iraq), Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
It goes without saying that some of the borders within this region remain contested. In creating this list, we are not taking any political positions. Instead, we hope that after reading about the Middle East, you will learn something new and feel better equipped to form your own opinions.
Highly-Rated Books Set in the Middle East
The Lion Women of Tehran
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1950s Tehran, Ellie lives a privileged life. However, her whole world changes when her father unexpectedly passes away, and she and her mother must move to a tiny home downtown.
On her first day at her new school, Ellie meets Homa, a kind, brave, and passionate girl who becomes her best friend. They spend all their time together learning to cook, playing games, and wandering the Grand Bazaar.
But then Ellie’s life flips again when she’s given a chance to return to her privileged life and attend the best girls’ high school in Iran. Over time, her thoughts of Homa fade, and she embraces her bourgeois life. When Homa suddenly reappears, the course of both of their lives is changed forever. The rising political turmoil in the country complicates things even further.
Why We Think You’ll Love This Book
This highly-rated novel, from the author of The Stationery Shop and Together Tea, starts with a focus on the girls coming of age in the 1950s & 1960s Iran, but then follows the women through the present day.
We both read this book and rated it 5 stars. We’ve read quite a few books set in Iran over the years, but this one, more than any other, helped us to really understand the evolution over the years. We loved the beautifully complex friendship between Ellie and Homa, and we’ll be thinking about them for a long time.
The Stolen Queen
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1936, anthropology student Charlotte Cross was offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, but when tragedy strikes, Charlotte’s future is forever changed.
Forty-two years later, 18-year-old Annie Jenkins lands an amazing opportunity working for Diana Vreeland, the iconic former fashion editor at Vogue. It’s 1978, and Diana is organizing the famous Met Gala. Annie will have her work cut out for her in order to keep up with Diana’s demands and exacting standards.
Charlotte now leads a quiet life as the associate curator of Egyptian Art at the Met. She wants little to do with the city’s “party of the year” because she’s too consumed with her research on Hathorkare – a rare female pharaoh who most other Egyptologists deem unimportant.
When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing on the night of the gala, Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity. With signs that Hathorkare’s legendary curse might have been reawakened, the two women will travel to the one place Charlotte swore never to return – Egypt.
Why We Think You’ll Love This Book
Fiona Davis is one of our all-time favorite authors. Her novels all feature strong female characters and a tie-in to a specific historic building in New York City. This book had us from the moment the summary mentioned the Met, but then the chance to also armchair travel to Egypt was the icing on the cake.
This book makes you feel like you’re right there in Egypt, while also diving into the topics of archaeology and the rightful ownership of antiquities. This book completely hit the mark and delivered everything we hoped for and more.
If you enjoy historical fiction, this book covers many thought-provoking topics, ranging from repatriation of antiquities and cultural appropriation to museum funding and gender bias in academia, and even fashion.
A Similar Book You Might Like
If you enjoy dual-timeline novels, Husbands and Lovers by Beatriz Williams is another novel set partially in Egypt and partially on the East Coast of the US. In 2022, single mom Mallory lives in New England and is juggling work, grief, and her son’s life-altering illness when a family heirloom raises questions she can’t ignore. In 1951, Hannah—a Hungarian refugee in Cairo—navigates love, peril, and political unrest. As Mallory follows a trail through Egypt, the women’s stories converge, revealing long-buried connections.
Songs for the Brokenhearted
Book Summary
This dual-timeline novel takes readers back in time, first to the 1950s and then to 1995. During the 1950s, thousands of Yemeni Jews immigrated to the newly founded State of Israel, hoping to find a better life there. In an overcrowded immigrant camp, a shy young man named Yaqub falls in love with a beautiful young girl named Saida after first encountering her singing by the river. But Saida is married with a child, so their love was not meant to be.
Three decades later, Saida’s daughter, Zohara, is now a 30-something. Growing up in Israel, Zohara always wished that her skin were lighter, that her mother’s Yemeni music were quieter, and that her father were still alive. Zohara now lives in New York City, where life feels much less complicated to her. She hasn’t been back home in a long time and has little contact with her mother or sister. But when her sister, Lizzie, calls to tell her their mom has died, Zohara buys a one-way plane ticket to Israel.
Once back home, she begins down a path that will reveal things she never knew about her mother, and will cause her to question both her own heritage and her own future.
About the Author
Author Ayelet Tsabari was born in Petah Tikva, Israel. She grew up in Israel and spent many years living abroad. She has previously published works that include a memoir and numerous short stories, but Songs for the Brokenhearted is her debut novel.

The Antiquity Affair
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
91% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Dr. Warren Ford is an esteemed archaeologist and the father of two very different twin daughters. Lila is an intellectual about to debut as a Manhattan socialite. Tess, on the other hand, is a nonconformist who wants nothing more than to follow in her father’s footsteps. Despite their differences, the brilliant sisters have their own language, and they excel at translating and code-breaking.
It’s the early 20th century, and the dawn of Egyptology is a time of imperialism and plunder. Dr. Ford is considered the man of the hour. But when a secretive organization wants to find a lost relic known for its dangerous legendary power, it’s not Dr. Ford they turn to – it’s his daughters.
The lost artifact – known as the Serpent’s Crown – is believed to reside in the Tomb of the Five Ladies. Opening the tomb, however, requires solving a seemingly impossible riddle. The organization believes that one of the Ford daughters holds the key to deciphering the code.
On the eve of Lila’s debutante ball, she and her father discover that Tess has been kidnapped and put on a ship across the Atlantic bound for Egypt.
Why This Book Made the List
This historical fiction novel has been described as a feminist take on the Indiana Jones series. The writing style is said to provide an adventurous, movie-like experience. Be sure to read the author’s note at the end because the co-authors do a good job outlining which parts of the book are history versus fiction.
A Similar Book You Might Enjoy
For a different take on Egyptology, consider Empress of the Nile by Lynne Olson. This non-fiction book tells the little-known story of French archaeologist Christine Desroches Noblecourt. In the 1960s, she intervened to protect dozens of ancient Egyptian temples that would have otherwise been lost to the floodwaters of the new Aswan High Dam.

Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
If you love international family sagas, consider this highly rated 2021 novel. The Nasr family consists of a Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American adult children who have always lived a life of migration. However, their ancestral home has always been in Beirut.
When the family patriarch dies, Idris inherits the home and decides to sell it. However, no one else is on board with this plan. They all travel to Beirut to persuade him to keep the home. The region is still trying to recover from war, handle an influx of refugees, and is full of religious and political tension.
Tensions exist within the family as well. Although they share a goal of saving their home, secrets, and jealousy exist between the family members.
About the Author
The author, Hala Alyan, is a Palestinian-American poet, novelist, and clinical psychologist.
Shortly after Alyan’s birth in Illinois, the family returned to Kuwait, where her Lebanese mother and Palestinian father had met and married, and continued to live there until Alyan was four. Following the Iraqi forces’ invasion of the country, her family sought political asylum in the United States. In the years that followed, her family moved over a dozen times between the Middle East and the U.S.
Alyan received her bachelor’s degree from the American University of Beirut and now resides in New York.
More Middle East Books by Hala Alyan
Alyan also authored the 2017 novel Salt Houses, set across Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, and Jordan, which spans the years 1963-2014. As well as the 2025 memoir I’ll Tell You When I’m Home.
The Spice Box Letters
Book Summary
This novel begins in Cyprus, where Katerina discovers a wooden spice box that belonged to her late grandmother. It holds a journal as well as a stack of letters, all written in Armenian. These clues spark a journey that carries Katerina even further from her home in England, in search of answers to help her piece together the untold story of her family history.
Told from a dual-timeline perspective, the novel interweaves the story of Katerina in 1985 with that of her grandmother, Mariam, during the 1915 Armenian genocide. Mariam was exiled from her home in Turkey and later lived in Cyprus.
Why This Book Made the List
Reviewers describe this novel as a mix of history and mystery, with a side of culinary traditions.
For historical context, the 1915 Armenian genocide took place in the Ottoman Empire, in an area that is primarily modern-day Turkey. While Katerina travels to Armenia to learn about her heritage, readers note that this book focuses much more on her grandmother’s life in Turkey and Cyprus.
The House on Sun Street
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Moji is a curious and imaginative child who loves growing up in the lush gardens of her grandparents in Tehran. However, a revolution is brewing, and soon, the last monarch of Iran will leave the country, changing everything.
This book puts you in the shoes of a young girl and her family as they experience the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a time of profound political and social change. The story follows Moji from the age of 6 to 13, as she comes of age during the Islamic Revolution and then the Iran-Iraq War. She was born into a Westernized world and watches it change to devalue women, just as she is becoming one.
About the Author
Mojgan Ghazirad graduated from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in her home country with a medical degree before studying pediatrics at Inova Children’s Hospital and receiving her neonatal medicine specialty from the George Washington University.
While she now lives with her family in Virginia, this novel is based on her memories of growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and of the years of war between Iran and Iraq after the Revolution.
The Mismatch
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Soraya is a 21-year-old British-Iranian woman who has just graduated from university. She’s ready for her first job and catching up on life experiences she has missed due to her cultural upbringing – like her first kiss. Rugby player Magnus seems like just the person for the job. He is quintessentially British and so different from the type of person she is expected to marry that it seems like she can enjoy a harmless kiss with no risk of falling for him.
Soraya’s story is counter-balanced with flashbacks to her mother’s life growing up in 1970s Tehran, Iran, before it was radicalized. You’ll see her struggles and how she ended up leaving Iran, along with how her background impacted the decisions she made raising her own daughters.
Why This Book Made the List
While this book alternates between Soraya’s life dating and finding love in England with her mom’s experiences doing the same in 1970s Iran, the portions in England are also heavily influenced by Iranian culture.
Although this is a romance novel on the surface, it provides an interesting perspective on the immigrant experiences of both the first and second-generation women in the same family. However, if you are looking for a book that is fully set in the Middle East versus partially, skip this pick.
About the Author
Author Sara Jafari is British-Iranian and is able to use her background to accurately portray both British-Iranian Muslims and the older generation in Iran.
Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege
Book Summary
Daraya, Syria, lies on the fringe of Damascus, the capital city. But, for four years, while other areas of the country were relatively stable, Daraya was under siege. Bashar al-Assad’s government forces took over the city early in the Syrian Civil War. Its people were deprived of food, bombarded by heavy artillery, and under the constant fire of snipers.
Deep below the devastation, there was a respite for the innocent citizens caught in a war they didn’t want, a hidden library. Long rows of books, from reference materials to Syrian poetry, were collected from the doomed city above them. A shared love of books created new friendships and provided hope and peace in a time when many had neither.
About the Author
Author and British journalist for the BBC, Mike Thomson, initially tried to get into Syria to report on the emerging civil war, but it was deemed too dangerous. Instead, he was able to establish contacts in Daraya, allowing the citizens’ side of the civil war to be reported to the world. He had no idea his reporting would uncover the most incredible story of hope and the power of books from inside a war zone.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Author Khaled Hosseini is most known for his best-selling novel, The Kite Runner, which would also be a great pick this month. However, we chose one of his other works, A Thousand Splendid Suns, for the list because it spans the three decades in Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion and the Taliban’s reign, to post-Taliban rebuilding.
The emotional book follows two generations of brave women, Mariam and Laila, brought together by war. It explores the universal desire to find happiness and raise a family, even when tragic circumstances are happening all around you. It does a beautiful job of humanizing the real people living in a country that has undergone dramatic changes in lifestyle due to the changing government. So grab the tissues and prepare for tears, horror, and a sprinkling of hope.
About the Author
Author Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. Hosseini is also a U.S. Goodwill Envoy to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
Hosseini is also the author of the highly-rated novel And the Mountains Echoed, which is set across the globe, from Kabul to Paris, and from San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos.
An Unnecessary Woman
Book Summary
Aaliya Saleh is a 72-year-old woman living alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by towering stacks of books. Once a bookseller, now retired, she spends her days quietly translating her favorite novels into Arabic—purely for her own satisfaction, never for publication.
As she works through the pages, she reflects on her decades of solitude, the wars that have shaken her city, and the complicated ties with her family and neighbors.
Consider This Before Reading
Through her interior monologue, this novel is both an intimate portrait of Aaliya’s mind and a love letter to literature. However, Aaliya’s observations and words about different people groups are complicated. Some reviewers have pointed out inconsistencies in her thoughts about Israeli Jews, with one section within the book being offensive while other mentions were positive.
About the Author
Author Rabih Alameddine is one of Beirut’s most celebrated authors. He was born in Jordan to Lebanese parents and spent his childhood in Kuwait and Lebanon before moving to England at age 17, and then later to California to pursue his higher education.
The Sandcastle Girls
Book Summary
In 1915, Elizabeth arrived in Aleppo, Syria, as a volunteer with the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to help refugees from the Armenian genocide. During World War I, when she arrives, she meets Armen, an engineer. When he has to travel to Egypt to join the British Army, he stays in contact with Elizabeth via letters. As they correspond, he finds himself in love with the wealthy American who is so different than the wife he tragically lost.
In the present day, Laura is a novelist in New York. When an old friend claims to have seen a newspaper photo of her grandmother, she begins a journey back through her family’s history. Eventually, she discovers a wrenching secret that has been buried for decades.
About the Author
Chris Bohjalian is an American novelist of Armenian descent whose family history runs through the Middle East. His father was Armenian, and his grandparents were survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. His grandparents’ experiences of deportation into the Syrian desert and the refugee city of Aleppo inspired him to write this, his most personal novel.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is a non-fiction book that reads like page-turning fiction. In the 2010s, the Syrian refugee crisis flooded the news, with many countries overwhelmed trying to process the vast numbers of asylum seekers fleeing their war-torn homes.
This book tells the well-rounded story of one girl, Doaa, starting with her life in Syria before the war and following her journey of strength, courage, and sorrow. Each page is compelling as you get an inside look at a 19-year-old refugee who first fought to stay in Syria and then fought for her life and the lives of other children during a harrowing four days at sea.
Why We Think You’ll Love This Book
This is one of Melissa’s favorite books of all time. It intersects a dramatic page-turning story with rare insight into everything a refugee endures before landing in another country to ask for asylum. If you loved Adunni in The Girl with the Louding Voice, we think you’ll also fall in love with Doaa.
If you’ve already read this one, another highly-rated Syrian refugee memoir is Homes by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah.
About the Author
Melissa Fleming was born in Massachusetts and has spent her adult life living in Europe and working for international refugee organizations. She leads communications for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and travels to war zones and refugee camps to give a voice to those people forcibly displaced from their homes. In A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea, she tells the story of one of the Syrian refugees she worked with.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Zayneb is the only Muslim in her class, and when she gets suspended for confronting her teacher about his Islamophobia, her parents send her to her aunt’s house in Doha.
Her path crosses with Adam on the flight to Qatar. He was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. But he’s hiding his illness from his already grieving father and has stopped going to classes. Instead, he is intent on keeping the memory of his mom alive for his little sister.
Although Zayneb isn’t the kind of girl who believes in fate, meeting Adam might just be fate intervening exactly when they both need it most.
Reviews describe this novel as “heartfelt and honest” and as “a beautiful, complex, and important book.”
Why This Book Made the List
This book was a Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Young Adult Fiction. It receives very positive reviews, including from self-identified Muslim readers. One such reviewer calls it “one of the most unapologetically Muslim books that I’ve ever read.”
If you enjoy Zayneb and Adam as much as most reviewers do, you can continue with Adam and Zayneb’s story in Love From Mecca to Medina. The paperback version of the sequel also includes a bonus story called The Eid Gift.
About the Author
Author S.K. Ali was born in southern India and immigrated to Canada at a young age. She has said that her goal is to write the characters she never saw growing up as a Muslim girl in Toronto. She was first inspired to write Love From A to Z while visiting the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.
Sparks Like Stars
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
At the beginning of this novel, written by an Afghan author, ten-year-old Sitara has a great life. It’s 1978, and Sitara’s father holds an important position as the right-hand man to the country’s progressive President, Sardar Daoud.
Her privileged world is shattered when she’s the lone survivor of her family after a coup. After being smuggled out of the palace, Sitara finds safety with an American diplomat, who later adopts her.
Thirty years later, she’s become a successful surgeon in America. However, her past comes racing back when she sees a new elderly patient, Shair, who was the soldier who saved her during the coup. However, Shair may have also been responsible for the deaths of her family. Her desire for past answers is rekindled after decades of a successful life.
Why This Book Made the List
Only the first half of Sparks Like Stars is set in Afghanistan, but we thought it was worth including as a dramatically different look at the country from before the Soviet invasion.
The author has also written three other highly-rated books set in Afghanistan – The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, House Without Windows, and When the Moon is Low.
About the Author
Nadia Hashimi is a first-generation American of Afghan parents. In addition to traveling to Afghanistan with her parents, she serves on the boards of organizations committed to educating and nurturing Afghanistan’s most vulnerable children and empowering the female leaders of tomorrow. She is also a member of the US-Afghan Women’s Council.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This historical fiction novel, based on true events, follows four generations of a Jewish family. As Hitler rose to power, Gerhard and Elsa Schliemann fled Germany in search of a safe place to raise their children. After finding few opportunities elsewhere in Europe for Gerhard to continue his work as a medical professor, the family unexpectedly found refuge in Istanbul, Turkey, where the universities and hospitals welcomed him. However, despite embracing their adopted country, this family’s story would not be without its struggles.
From WWII to the age of social media, this novel provides a good look at political, societal, and cultural upheavals that occurred in Turkey over the decades. Throughout this 80-year period, the Schliemann family experiences challenges to their cultural identity, and 80 years after escaping Germany, anti-Semitism once again threatens their future.
Another Book by Ayse Kulin to Consider
Ayşe Kulin is one of Turkey’s most beloved contemporary authors and also wrote the international bestseller, Last Train to Istanbul. Although less of that novel takes place in Turkey, historical fiction fans will also enjoy that it follows a group of Turkish diplomats aiding hundreds of Jewish people fleeing the Nazi invasion of France. From Ankara to Paris, Cairo, and Berlin, The Last Train to Istanbul crisscrosses a war-torn continent in an uplifting tale of love and adventure.
The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Sunny’s life has had some ups and downs, but she never expected that she’d finally feel at home in the middle of a war zone. At age 38, Sunny brings hospitality to everyone who walks through the doors of the Kabul Coffee Shop. The busier the coffee shop, the easier it is for her to forget about Tommy, the love of her life, who walked out.
Sunny works alongside Halajan, a woman who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and is now forced to hide her modern romance from her very traditional-minded son.
They welcome a wide variety of patrons into the coffee shop, from a British journalist on the trail of a risky story to a wealthy American with a desire to help that clouds her better judgment.
When a young Afghan girl named Yazmina is kidnapped and left on the street pregnant and alone, Sunny welcomes her in and offers her a home. But Yazmina is hiding a secret that could put them all in jeopardy.
Through their unlikely friendships, each of these vibrantly drawn characters will be forever changed.
About the Author
Author Deborah Rodriguez spent five years teaching at and later directing the Kabul Beauty School, the first modern beauty academy and training salon in Afghanistan. She wrote a memoir about that experience titled Kabul Beauty School, then used her experiences living in Afghanistan to write the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul fictional series.
Thoughts on This Book
Some reviewers criticize the author for writing fiction about a culture that is not her own, while others praise her for providing readers with an opportunity to read a lighter novel that features the kindness of the Afghan way of life without shying away from the realities of the treatment of women.
The second and third books in the series are both higher rated than the first, but they are best read in the order they were written.
The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq
Book Summary
In this work of non-fiction, poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail tells the stories of several women who managed to escape from Daesh, the terrorist group also known as ISIS.
Since 2014, Daesh has been brutalizing the Yazidi people of Northern Iraq, killing those who refuse to convert to Islam, and enslaving women and young girls. The women whose stories are told in this book have lost their families, have been sexually abused, and have been psychologically tortured. Through their interviews with Mikhail, as their stories unfold, an unlikely hero emerges – a beekeeper who operates a network to help these women navigate to safety through the torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Thoughts on This Book
Readers say this non-fiction, while it deals with a very difficult subject matter, is written in a very compelling way. If you prefer to read fiction, consider The Bird Tattoo by the same author.
About the Author
Author Dunya Mikhail was born in Iraq in 1965 and worked as a journalist for the liberal Baghdad Observer. After facing increasing threats from Iraqi authorities, Dunya was forced to flee first to Jordan and then to the US. In addition to writing, she also serves as an Arabic instructor for Michigan State University. In recognition of the importance of her work, she was awarded a UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing in 2001.
Take What You Can Carry
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
97% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This novel is set in 1979 in the war-torn Kurdistan Region – an autonomous region in northern Iraq. The main character, Olivia, is a secretary for an LA newspaper but dreams of being a photojournalist. So when her Kurdish boyfriend is invited home to a wedding, she agrees to join him and hopes to take photos that will get her recognized at work. Plus, it’s an excellent opportunity to understand her boyfriend’s past.
However, when they arrive, they realize the trip will be more dangerous than they anticipated. The town is now under curfew and patrolled by the armed Iraqi military. When Olivia photographs a tragic event, it may pull her relationship apart.
Despite the region being torn apart by war, the book is a beautiful look at the lush landscapes and culture of Kurdistan. You’ll also find a balance of destruction and hope in this descriptive romance.
About the Author
Gian Sardar was born and raised in the US. Her father is from Kurdistan of Iraq, where he grew lush gardens amid turmoil, and Take What You Can Carry is based on his stories, as well as a trip the family took in 1979.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This historical fiction novel takes us back to the 14th century BC to explore the life of Nefertiti, the ambitious, charismatic, and beautiful wife of the pharaoh, King Amenhotep.
Nefertiti is beloved by the people of Egypt, and there is hope that with her strong personality, she’ll be able to temper Amunhotep’s desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods in favor of introducing a new sun god for all to worship. But while Nefertiti is focused on the task of conceiving a male heir to the throne, she fails to see that the powerful priests and military are plotting against her husband’s rule.
Nefertiti’s sister, however, recognizes the shifting political winds and is brave enough to tell the queen. Unlike her sister, Mutnodjmet has no desire for power, preferring instead a quiet life without the pressures of family duty, where she can marry for love. But when Nefertiti learns of the threats to her reign, she demands that Mutnodjmet remain at court and marry for political gain.
Can Mutnodjmet defy her sister’s wishes while also remaining loyal to her family? This novel is packed with love, betrayal, political unrest, plague, and religious conflict.
Thoughts on This Book
This novel is said to be both fast-paced and historically accurate. Readers praise author Michelle Moran’s extensive research and ability to bring this iconic woman from history to life in greater detail, while crafting a compelling fictional story for Nefertiti’s younger sister, Mutnodjmet.
About the Author
Michelle Moran grew up in California and attended Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University. During her six years as a public high school reading and writing teacher, she spent her summers traveling around the world, including volunteering on archaeological digs. These experiences inspired her to write historical fiction.

Daughters of Smoke & Fire
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
93% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
The main character, Leila, is a young Kurdish woman living in Iran. She dreams of telling the untold stories of her people, the 40 million stateless Kurds, via filmmaking. Her younger brother, Chia, pursues activism differently, and his involvement in politics and social justice has been growing. Then, one day, he disappears from Tehran.
Leila fears the worst and makes it her mission to save him. However, her attempts at finding him begin to endanger her own life. Throughout this fictional modern-day story, you’ll find yourself immersed in the everyday life of the Kurds while learning about Kurdish history from the 1970s to the present.
Why This Book Made the List
This is the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer. It was named one of the best books of 2020 by The Wall Street Journal.
About the Author
Ava Homa has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor in Canada, and another in English Language and Literature from Tehran, Iran. She is a Kurdish writer, journalist, and activist who has given speeches on writing as resistance, human rights, gender equality, Kurdish affairs, media literacy, and other topics.
It’s Not What You Think
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
92% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Author Sabeeha Rehman grew up in Pakistan and married her husband, a Pakistani doctor, via an arranged marriage. Together, they raised their sons in New York, where Sabeeha attended graduate school and received a Master’s in Health Administration. After working as a hospital executive in New Jersey, Sabeeha and her oncologist husband relocated to Saudi Arabia. They originally planned to live in Riyadh, the most conservative city in the country, for just two years- but they ended up staying for six.
When Sabeeha is offered a position at Riyadh’s most prestigious hospital, she’s first required to get permission from her husband to work. Then she has to quickly familiarize herself with local laws and customs. Women in the city cannot work in public places, yet they do hold positions of authority within corporate culture. Sabeeha also discovers many women-owned and operated businesses flourishing outside of Riyadh.
Sabeeha provides insights into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” boundaries in which Saudi and Western expat cultures coexist. As well as how to discern the difference between what is considered “culturally appropriate” versus what is legally required.
Another Memoir by Sabeeha Rehman
Rehman’s first memoir, Threading My Prayer Rug, details her upbringing in Pakistan and her later efforts to provide her young sons with a Muslim community on Staten Island.
About the Night
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Translated from the original Hebrew, About the Night is a love story that begins in the 1940s. Elias is a Christian Arab living on the eastern side of the newly divided city, and Lila is a Jew living on the western side. Despite their deep love for each other, they’re separated by a physical wall and by distrust between their regions. Sadly, from 1948 until the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, which reunited Jerusalem, Elias and Lila couldn’t communicate at all.
This slow-burning book is told from the perspective of Elias, lying in his bed sick in 2006, as he reflects on his life and choices. It’s fiction but loosely based on the story of the Israeli author’s family friend.
About the Author
Author Anat Talshir is an Israeli author and has been one of Israel’s most distinguished investigative journalists in addition to teaching creative writing at a college in Rishon LeTsiyon, Israel. About the Night was written in Hebrew and translated.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This is the intimate memoir of a devout Muslim woman turned accidental activist. Raised in a modest Saudi Arabian family and born the year fundamentalism took hold in her country, Manal describes herself as a religious radical in her adolescence. She once melted her brother’s boy band cassettes in the oven because the music was haram, forbidden by Islamic law. But education changed everything for her.
In her twenties, she became a computer security engineer and was one of only a few women working in a desert compound that she describes as resembling suburban America. It was here that her experiences and the contradictions of the Saudi kingdom became too much for her to ignore quietly. She was labeled a slut for talking with male colleagues, she had to have her teenage brother chaperone her on business trips, and while she could keep a car in her garage, she was forbidden from being behind the wheel on city streets.
In this memoir, Manal provides a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of women in Saudi Arabia. She describes how she became an unexpected leader in supporting women’s right to drive, stood up to a kingdom of men, and won!
About the Author
Manal Al-Sharif was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. She graduated from King Abdulaziz University with a degree in computing and, until May 2012, worked as an Information Security Consultant for the Saudi National Oil Company. She has spent much of the last decade campaigning for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
WARNING: There is a short section of the book where Manal tells about her experience with female circumcision. It’s heartbreaking and may be shocking.
Book Summary
Qatar received worldwide attention when it hosted the 2022 World Cup. With Qatar reliant on migrant labor that exploits the workers, the wealthy nation had its extreme capitalism put in the international spotlight.
On the surface, Qatar is a modern city full of Skyscrapers, museums, and Ferraris. However, the futuristic football stadiums were built by desperate migrant workers in horrific conditions for equally horrifying wages. Inside Qatar reveals how real people live in this surreal place, a land of both great opportunity and great iniquity.
About the Author
Author John McManus is a social anthropologist for the British Institute at Ankara. His research focuses on migration and multiculturalism in Europe and the Middle East. Inside Qatar was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2023.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Libyan author Hisham Matar returns home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father’s disappearance. When he was just 12, Matar’s family went into political exile in Egypt. His father was a former Libyan diplomat turned political dissident against the Qaddafi regime. Eight years after their exile, Matar’s father was kidnapped from the streets of Cairo by the Libyan government. When the Qaddafi reign fell, Matar and his family returned home with the hope of finding clues about their father’s whereabouts.
This memoir is not told linearly, but rather consists of a series of stories through which Matar pieces the whole story together. His prose allows readers to feel the same painful emotions that his family experienced through the years. In addition to sharing the story of his family, Matar also explores the concept of home and what it means to be a man and a father.
About the Author
Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents. His father was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. The family returned to Tripoli, Libya, when he was three years old, and he spent his childhood there until the family was forced to flee to Egypt due to political persecution under the Qaddafi regime. At the age of 16, he moved to London to further his education, where he has lived for much of his adult life.
A Fiction Option from Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar also wrote a powerful novel titled In the Country of Men, which tells the story of a 9-year-old Libyan who, in 1979, sees his best friend’s father arrested and shoved into a car on the streets of Tripoli. Then, his own father disappears. In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006, and, while fiction, it provides a compelling glimpse of life in Libya under Qaddafi.
The Broken Circle
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
92% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
While titled a memoir, it’s important to know going into this choice that it was ghost-written by an adult based on the memories of a child fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet Invasion in the early 1980s. As political unrest intensifies in the region, Enjeela’s mother visits India for medical treatment. While she is gone, the rest of the family realizes that they need to flee their home and attempt to reconnect with the mother.
The family’s wealth gives them more options than many, but they still had to endure a treacherous five-year journey, including walking the Hindu Kush section of the Himalayas, to find freedom again.
About the Author
Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller was born in 1976 in Kabul, Afghanistan, and is currently a citizen of the United States. She has also lived in Pakistan and India.
Another Memoir You Might Like
For another fascinating memoir set in Afghanistan, check out Open Skies: My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot by Niloofar Rahmani with Adam Sikes.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
92% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This non-fiction book tells the story of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a young Yemeni-American born in California to Yemeni immigrant parents. At the age of 24, Mokhtar discovers Yemen’s central role in the history of coffee. He decides to travel from his home in San Francisco to his ancestral homeland to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee.
While he travels deep into the country, touring terraced farms high in the rugged mountains of Yemen and meeting the farmers, war engulfs the country, and Saudi bombs begin raining down. Mokhtar must find a way to safely escape Yemen without giving up on his dreams or abandoning the people he’s met.
Thoughts on This Book
This book was a Goodreads nominee for Best History and Biography in 2018. It’s important to note that this book begins in San Francisco and Mokhtar doesn’t travel to Yemen until later in the book.
This is a particularly enjoyable read for coffee lovers. If you are uninterested in coffee, you’ll probably want to skip this one.
About the Author
Dave Eggers is an American author whose breakout work was a memoir about the death of his parents and his struggle to raise his younger brother. That memoir was chosen as a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Nonfiction. Since that time, Eggers has had many other fiction and non-fiction successes.
In writing The Monk of Mokha, he conducted hundreds of hours of interviews and spent countless days traveling with Mokhtar Alkhanshali.
On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer
Book Summary
While this memoir was published in 2025, it’s based on travel writer Rick Steves’ journals from his 1978 trip on the “Hippie Trail” from Istanbul, Turkey, to Kathmandu, Nepal, which was the ultimate goal for so many backpackers in the 1970s. As a 23-year-old on a shoestring budget, he and his friend Gene braved wild bus rides, monsoons, and endless adventures across six countries.
Be sure to read both the preface and afterward, which are written recently, reflecting back on his younger years. For the bulk of this memoir, he opted to leave his journal entries from the trip unedited as a time capsule despite knowing that his younger self sometimes sounds naive, insensitive, and even ignorant. However, those moments are balanced by his good-natured curiosity, compassion, and awareness.
Why This Book Made the List
Angela listened to this short memoir and enjoyed hearing of Rick Steves’ early adventures in his own voice. Roughly the first half of this journey takes place in the Middle East, and all of it is described in vivid detail.
Sleepless in Dubai
Book Summary
In this hate-to-love teen rom-com, neighbors Nikki and Yash both accompany their families on a holiday to Dubai to celebrate the five days of Diwali. The two teens have a rocky history, but their families keep trying to matchmake.
Can betrayals and conflicting ambitions be set aside long enough for the two teens to discover the true meaning of the Festival of Lights?
Thoughts on This Book
Readers say the audio version of this book is particularly great.
You are welcome to choose any book that you’d like to read for the challenge, but we hope that this list of books has given you a good starting point.
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Book Recommendations for Other Regions
Find more recommendations for other regions of the world using the links below.
- Books Set in the Middle East
- Books Set on a Form of Transportation
- Books Set in Asia: Northern Countries
- Books Set in Asia: Southern Countries
- Books Set in Australia and New Zealand
- Books Set in South America
- Books Set in North America
- Books Set in Eastern Europe & Russia
- Books That Take Place On an Island
- Books Set in Africa
- Books Set in Western Europe
- Books Set in Antarctica and the Arctic
- Books that Span Multiple Continents



I would like to recommend THE MONK OF MOKHA and READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN.