Nonfiction Books by Arab and Arab American Authors

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. His nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, is a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, college campuses, and city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

In a beautifully written, science-packed, and inspirational memoir, Egyptian-American astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance shares how she boldly carved out a place in the field of astrophysics, grounding herself in a lifelong love of the stars to face life’s inevitable challenges and embrace the unknown. Honest and empowering, Starstruck sits at the intersection of the study of our cosmos—itself constantly changing—and the transformative experience of embracing resilience to pursue one’s passion.

From the acclaimed editor of Our Women on the Ground comes a dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmetic. Seen through Zahra Hankir’s (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Delightful, surprising, and utterly absorbing, Eyeliner is a fascinating tour through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history.

Arabiyya celebrates the alluring aromas and flavors of Arab food and the welcoming spirit with which they are shared. Written from her point of view as an Arab in diaspora, Reem takes readers on a journey through her Palestinian and Syrian roots, showing how her heritage has inspired her recipes for flatbreads, dips, snacks, platters to share, and more. Arabiyya showcases the origins and evolution of Arab cuisine and opens up a whole new world of flavor.

An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father’s new family, forging unexpected bonds, and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country—from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream. It Won’t Always Be Like This is a touching time capsule of Gharib’s childhood memories—each summer a fleeting moment in time—and a powerful reflection on identity, relationships, values, family, and what happens when it all collides.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life. A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape—current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude—and shed further light on the present world around us.

The Prophet contains powerful words of wisdom on such essential subjects as marriage, children, friendship, work, and pleasure—words that readers from around the world have found inspirational and life-changing. A poet, artist, and mystic, Gibran was born to a poor Christian family in Lebanon and emigrated to the United States as an adolescent, where he began studying art. The twenty-eight poetic essays collected in The Prophet are illustrated with twelve of his full-page drawings.

In this brilliantly argued and deeply personal work, Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using her own story as a starting point for an exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Weaving together her experiences with an examination of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture, Lalami illuminates how conditional citizens are all those whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other.

A longtime undercover agent, Tamer Elnoury joined an elite counterterrorism unit after September 11, 2001. Its express purpose was to gain the trust of terrorists whose goals were to take out as many Americans in as public and devastating a way as possible. It was a furious race against the clock for Elnoury and his unit to stop them before they could implement their plans. In this memoir, an active Muslim American federal agent reveals his experience infiltrating and bringing down a terror cell in North America.

I Was Their American Dream is at once a coming-of-age story and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search of a better life for themselves and their children. Malaka Gharib’s triumphant graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised.

Rana el Kaliouby is a rarity in both the tech world and her native Middle East: a Muslim woman in charge in a field that is still overwhelmingly white and male. Girl Decoded chronicles el Kaliouby’s journey from being a “nice Egyptian girl” to becoming a woman, carving her own path as she revolutionizes technology. But decoding herself—learning to express and act on her own emotions—would prove to be the biggest challenge of all.

At twelve years old, Elamin Abdelmahmoud emigrates with his family from his native Sudan to Kingston, Ontario, arguably one of the most homogenous cities in North America. At the airport, he’s handed his Blackness like a passport, and realizes that he needs to learn what this identity means in a new country. An enlightening and deliciously witty collection of essays on Blackness, faith, pop culture, and the challenges—and rewards—of finding one’s way in the world. With the perfect balance of relatable humor and intellectual ferocity, Son of Elsewhere confronts what we know about ourselves, and most important, what we’re still learning.

From Snapchat and TikTok sensation, business mogul, and recording artist, DJ Khaled reveals his major keys to success. This inspirational book will help you “win, win, win no matter what.”

When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The Return is the story of what he found there. Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable work.

A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat—female journalists—are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands. In Our Women on the Ground, nineteen of these women tell us, in her own words, about what it’s like to report on conflicts that (quite literally) hit close to home. Their daring and heartfelt stories, told here for the first time, shatter stereotypes about the region’s women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood.

This original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate—one that remains as critical as ever. Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two people in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied—as well as in the conscience of the West. For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.

Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this powerful memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America. Hailed as “one of the finest writers of her generation” (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny, and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. I am joyful.

A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution—and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope.

A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life. Because, as she learned, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again, not just to survive, but to live.

Leila Slimani was in her native Morocco promoting her novel Adèle, about a woman addicted to sex, when she began meeting women who confided the dark secrets of their sexual lives. In Morocco, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, and sex outside of marriage are all punishable by law, and women have only two choices: They can be wives or virgins. Sex and Lies combines vivid, often harrowing testimonies with Slimani’s passionate and intelligent commentary to make a galvanizing case for a sexual revolution in the Arab world.