Books published by Banipal Books

Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah brings to life an ancient story after a single line in Aramaic on a tombstone fired his imagination. His epic poem awakens two lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina, the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at rest beside Hadrian's Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their tale.

Young Palestinian author Shada Mustafa's debut novel interrogates the memories of growing up, falling in love, that force themselves to be reckoned with. Ceaseless questioning to revisit the "things" she has left behind, lets the narrator redeem her life from the inexplicable pain and loss of childhood in an occupied and divided land and family.

Selected, introduced, and translated by Mohammed Sawaie, these works by Palestinian poets over seven decades give expression to Palestinian experience under Israeli rule and occupation, and the experience of dispersion and displacement from their homeland following the 1948 Nakba - Arab-Israeli War - and the subsequent wars of 1967 and 1973.

An exploration into the recent civil conflicts of Algeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina through Salim, a journalist, and Ivana, a young Bosnian woman, both having fled the destruction, hatred and atrocities of their countries to try to build a new life in Slovenia. A fictional memorial to the thousands of dead and 'disappeared', and to the survivors.

Ahmed Morsi is a renowned painter as well as art critic, journalist, and consummate poet, with his debut collection published at the age of 19. "Poems of Alexandria and New York", Morsi's first volume in English translation, and introduced, by Raphael Cohen, captures the modernity at the heart of all his works and his Surrealist humour.

Taleb Alrefai spotlights Kuwait's pearl-fishing history in this enthralling fictional re-telling of the final treacherous journey at sea of famous Kuwaiti dhow shipmaster Captain Al-Najdi, with flashbacks to the awesome pull of the sea on Al-Najdi since childhood and his voyages around the Arabian Peninsula with Australian sailor Alan Villiers.

This affectionate memoir by Tayeb Salih of his exuberant and irrepressible friend Mansi shows, with humour, wit, and 20th-century personalities centre stage, another side to the great author, renowned for his classic novel Season of Migration to the North. "A flavourful and entertaining memoir" - Boyd Tonkin