December
To read full entries, click on individual titles.
102. Honor – Elif Shafak
101. Disoriental – Negar Djavadi
100. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
99. The Book of Tea – Okakura Kakuzō
98. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree – Shokoofeh Azar
November
96. So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch – Karl Ove Knausgaard
95. Prospero’s Cell – Lawrence Durrell
93. Memoirs from the Women’s Prison – Nawal El Saadawi
92. Walking through Fire – Nawal El Saadawi
91. A Daughter of Isis – Nawal El Saadawi
89. The Journey of Ibn Fattouma – Naguib Mahfouz
October
88. Other Colors – Orhan Pamuk
86. How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division – Elif Shafak
85. Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak
83. The Island of Missing Trees – Elif Shafak
82. Last Train to Istanbul – Ayse Kulin
81. Gate of the Sun – Elias Khoury
80. Women of Sand and Myrrh – Hanan Al-Shaykh
79. Frankenstein in Baghdad – Ahmed Saadawi
September
78. Public Library – Ali Smith
76 & 77. Woman at Point Zero and God Dies by the Nile – Nawal El Saadawi
75. On Writing – Stephen King
73. The Return to Beirut – Andree Chedid
72. An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine
August
68. Burnt Shadows – Kamila Shamsie
67. Nine Parts of Desire – Geraldine Brooks
66. Among the Believers – V. S. Naipaul
65. The Palace of Dreams – Ismail Kadare
64. As Though She Were Sleeping – Elias Khoury
63. The Wasted Vigil – Nadeem Aslam
July
60. From Beirut to Jerusalem – Thomas Friedman with a re-reading of Black Wave – Kim Ghattas
59. A Fort of Nine Towers – Qais Akbar Omar
58. Woman Enough and Other Essays – Carmen Guerrero Nakpil
57. The Philippines is Not a Small Country – Gideon Lasco
56. Art As Therapy – Alain de Botton If you are into art, this book is for you. If you are not into art, this book
55. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes – Amin Maalouf
54. The Home That Was Our Country – Alia Malek
53. Little Mountain – Elias Khoury
52. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World – Elif Shafak
June
50. The White Castle – Orhan Pamuk (a re-reading)
49. World of Wonders – Aimee Nezhukumatathil
48. I, The Divine – Rabih Alameddine
47. Man of My Time – Dalia Sofer
46. Septembers of Shiraz – Dalia Sofer
45. Sea Prayer – Khaled Hosseini
44. The Map of Salt and Stars – Jennifer Zeyn Joukhadar
May
41. Nineveh and its Remains – Austen Henry Layard
40. Literary Occasions – V.S. Naipaul
39. Shadow of the Silk Road – Colin Thubron
38. Misadventure in the Middle East – Henry Hemming
37. A Hundred and One Days – Asne Seierstad “No story contains the whole story. This is just one of many and it gives a fragment of the whole, not more… The truth about the war in Iraq does not exist. Or rather, there are millions of true accounts and maybe just as many lies. My remit as a journalist in the chaos of war was not to judge, predict or analyze. It was to look, ask and report.”
36. The Possessed – Elif Batuman
35. How Proust Can Change Your Life – Alain de Botton
April
34. Tell Them of Battles, Kings & Elephants – Mathias Enard
33. Beyond Euphrates – Freya Stark
32. The Art of Travel – Alain de Botton
31. The Siege of Jolo – Agnes Aliman What did I know about the Siege of Jolo? Nothing. I knew so much more about the Iranian Revolution that occurred on the same decade, but nothing of the siege that happened a few hundred miles away from my own hometown in 1974. I thank this book for correcting that.
30. The Lost Soul – Olga Tokarczuk
28. Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
March
25. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
24. Beethoven Variations – Ruth Padel
23. The Complete Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
22. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
21. The Odyssey – Emily Wilson Translation
20. The Idiot – Elif Batuman More than being a coming-of-age story, I see it mainly as a unique contemplation on language, communication, and the complexity of human interaction.
February
17. The Monk of Mokha – Dave Eggers
15. Arabian Nights and Days – Naguib Mahfouz
14. The Hakawati – Rabih Alameddine
13. The Watchman of Old Cairo – Michael David Lukas
12. Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth – Naguib Mahfouz
11. Arabian Nights – Sir Richard Burton Translation
January
8. The Oracle of Stamboul – Michael David Lukas
7. Shame – Salman Rushdie
6. The Blood of Flowers – Anita Amirrezvani
5. Safar Nameh – Gertrude Bell
4. The Best Traveled Man On Earth – Jan Morris
3. Iran Awakening – Shirin Ebadi
2. Walking With the Wind – Abbas Kiarostami
1. The Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan
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