Books Set in the Middle East

Book Summary

Helen is a member of the Yazidi community, an ethnic-religious minority in Iraq. She lives with her family in the remote mountain village of Sinjar, which seems to stand apart from time – largely unaffected by political changes.

She falls in love with a man named Elias, and they start a family together in Sinjar. But when a brutal organization begins to infiltrate even the remote corners of Iraq, Elias, a journalist, goes missing. Helen’s search for her husband results in her being taken captive and enslaved by ISIS, an organization that justifies its violence as religious devotion.

When Helen eventually escapes and returns home, she discovers that not only is her husband still missing, but now her own sons are young recruits of the organization.

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.

Book Summary

Author Khalid Hosseini is most known for his best-selling novel, The Kite Runner, which would also be a great pick this month. However, we choose 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. 

Book Summary

It’s 1990, and 25-year-old Riyai is from India but works in Dubai for Discover Arabia, a desert tour company. While developers have dreams of transforming Dubai’s skyline and reputation into a modern metropolis, it hasn’t happened yet.

Like many of the transient workers who came to Dubai to earn money for families back home, Riya sees Dubai as a desert purgatory that separates her from her family. She’s constantly blamed for her company’s failings, which most recently included stranding the Sheik, his wives, and their children stranded on a tarmac. Can a notorious “fixer” get Riay back into good graces, or will Sadam Hussein’s impending invasion make everything else irrelevant?

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.

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 has an important job as the right-hand man of 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.

Book Summary

Sixteen-year-old Nouf is the daughter in a prominent family, so when she goes missing along with her favorite camel, the family calls in desert guide Nayir al-Sharqi to lead the search party. Just as they are about to give up, Nouf’s body is found, but the coroner determines that she died via drowning, not dehydration as you would expect.

Nouf’s family is strangely uninterested in this turn of events, but Nayir, a Palestinian orphan, joins forces with Katya Hijazi, a lab worker at the coroner’s office in an effort to find out what really happened to Nouf. In one of the most rigidly gender-segregated areas of the Middle East, Nayir is determined to enter the closed society in his hunt for answers.

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 – life 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.

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. But despite embracing their adopted country, this family’s story would not be without struggle.

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.

Book Summary

This novel is set in war-torn 1979 Kurdistan, a province in northern Iraq that is now an autonomous region. 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.

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 Amunhotep.

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, Mutnodjment 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.

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.

Book Summary

From the author of The Stationery Shop (also set partially in Iran), Together Tea is a novel about family and love. Darya decides her daughter, Mina, needs an extraordinary birthday gift for her 25th birthday – a husband! 

However, Mina is exhausted by her mom’s constant matchmaking. After yet another dating fail in New York City, Darya and Mina travel back to their home country of Iran. Once they’re out of their everyday routines and submerged back into Persian culture, the mother-daughter duo begins to understand each other better. 

Will that understanding continue when Mina meets a man outside her mom’s radar? 

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 grad school and received a Masters 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.

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 from his sick bed 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. 

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!

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.

Book Summary

Ora is a middle-aged Israeli mother, recently estranged from her husband and desperately waiting for her son’s return from military service. She decides that if she travels to Galilee for a secluded hike, her son will remain safe as the “notifiers” wouldn’t be able to reach her with any bad news.

Before leaving, she reaches out to Avram, a former best friend (and lover). He’s been reclusive since they were young and had his own terrible experience as a POW during his military service. As they walk together, day after day, Ora catches Avram up on her life as a mother, and he shares his experiences in war. Readers are left seeing two sides of life in Israel.

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.

Book Summary

This debut novel was written by a Palestinian-American poet and covers three generations of the same Palestinian family. It begins as the family is uprooted after the Six Day War of 1967. The main character, Alia, moves to Kuwait City and builds a new life with her husband and three children until Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990. Then, the family must again flee, this time being spread apart to Beirut, Paris, and Boston. 

As Alia’s grandchildren are born, each part of the family navigates the burdens and blessings of assimilation in new cities. 

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 is instead made up 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.

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 rest 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. 

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.