Emerging voices

Hoda Barakat

In the midst of Lebanon’s Civil War, a young gay man named Khalil tries to hold onto intimacy, dignity, and ordinary moments as his city fractures around him. As raids, rumors, and shifting loyalties reshape daily life, Khalil’s relationships—especially the bonds he forms and the closeness he longs for—become both refuge and risk. With sharp, unsentimental clarity, the novel traces how love, desire, and identity persist under occupation and violence, even as public life turns dangerous and private life becomes a battleground. Celebrated for its groundbreaking portrayal of a homosexual Arab protagonist and its lyrical, psychologically attentive style, this is a story of survival that finds meaning in contradiction—between laughter and ruin, tenderness and fear.

Ibrahim Al-Koni

In the remote mountain desert of southern Libya, Asouf—an isolated Bedouin herdsman—lives close to the rhythms of the land, where the moufflon still survives and myth feels as tangible as stone. As foreign intrusions and the arrival of oil wealth begin to reshape the world around him, the novel traces the slow disintegration of nomadic, tribal, and mythic culture, turning everyday survival into a quiet reckoning with loss. Through Asouf’s solitary existence, the story explores endurance, displacement, and the fragile bond between people, animals, and the landscapes that sustain them. Written in Ibrahim Al-Koni’s lyrical, myth-tinged style, this is a haunting meditation on what is taken—and what remains—when a way of life is irrevocably altered.