30 More SWANA Books in 2025: July-December Releases
My new semiannual tradition of writing about the most anticipated SWANA books coming out in the next six months is one of my favorite parts of the year, something that briefly helps cut through these seemingly endless times of violence and struggle for our communities. There’s always something new, unexpected, and life-affirming to be found in literature! Preparing these lists has also helped me find some of my own favorite books in recent years. From the first half of this year, I loved Mariam Rahmani’s Liquid, Hala Alyan’s I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi’s TERROR COUNTER.
I’ve been lucky to receive many galleys of books coming out between July and December, and I’ve tried to at least start all of the ones I’ve received. This list includes books I have started and loved, some I’ve finished, and some I’ve yet to read but which look really exciting! I’ve tried to include even more work in translation and from authors located around the world as much as possible. There’s so many different types of books on this list, truly something for everyone so I hope you all find your next reads!
Here are 30 anticipated new releases from July-December of 2025, broken down into fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. As always, both the books selected for this preview and the consideration of what falls under “SWANA literature” are meant to be expansive and inclusive but not comprehensive.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In addition to the new books, I wanted to give an honorable mention to some of the titles I missed on my January list that came out in the first half of the year, many of which I’ve already read and loved!
IN ANTHOLOGIES: Mixed-genre edited volume Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora, edited by Holly Mason Badra (University of Arkansas Press)
IN NONFICTION: Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian’s Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature (Spiegel & Grau); Iman Mersal’s brilliant Motherhood and Its Ghosts (Transit Books, trans. Robin Moger) was also brought back in print.
IN POETRY: Nour Al Ghraowi’s there are bodies here (F.I.N.E. Editions); Ahmad Alhallah’s Wrong Winds (Fonograf Editions); Sarah E. Azizi’s Make a Wish (ELJ Editions); Ghayath Almadhoun’s I Have Brought You a Severed Hand (Action Books, trans. Catherine Cobham); Hajer Mirwali’s Revolutions (Talonbooks); Ali C.’s Night of the Fire (Ethel).
IN FICTION: Mohammed Kheir’s Sleep Phase (Two Lines Press, trans. Robin Moger); Fatima Qandil’s Empty Cages (Hoopoe, trans. Adam Talib); Aram Mrjoian’s Waterline (HarperVia); and, one of my personal favorite books of the year so far, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters (FSG).
FICTION
Long Distance: Stories by Ayşegül Savaş (Bloomsbury, July 8)
I adored Ayşegül Savaş’s most recent novel The Anthropologists – it was one of my favorite books of 2024! What really made it special was the way Savaş builds up the intimacies of the characters through glimpses at the regular experiences of everyday life. That’s why I was so excited to see that she’s releasing a short story collection all about intimacies and the distances that erode them. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book!
The Orchards of Basra by Mansoura Ez-Eldin, trans. Paul Starkey (Interlink, July 8)
I’m really looking forward to digging further into The Orchards of Basra, a book that opens with a poetic, almost fantasy-like dreamscape of a past life that really draws you in. I was recently rewatching the X-Files episode “The Field Where I Died” and the start to this exciting new novel in translation really reminded me of the beautiful monologues of past lives in that episode. I’m fascinated by this speculative premise of switching between the ancient and the modern!
The Jasad Crown by Sara Hashem (Orbit, July 15)
This is the second and final book in Sara Hashem’s fantasy duology. The first book, The Jasad Heir, tells the story of Sylvia, the heir-in-hiding to a kingdom thought to be completely destroyed, and in the second we see whether she will get her kingdom back and what she might lose in the process. Inspired by Egyptian legends and history, this book looks like a great option for fans of high fantasy with a little romance… but of course, read book 1 first!
Three Parties by Ziyad Saadi (Hamish Hamilton, August 26)
I started reading this and can’t wait to get back to it! This is a modern retelling of Mrs. Dalloway about a young Palestinian man immersed in the meticulous task of planning the perfect party where he can come out to his friends and family. The writing is charming and quite funny at times, and our narrator Firas Dareer is a very endearing character. I love a classics retelling, and this one seems particularly compelling!
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine (Grove/Atlantic, September 2)
Rabih Alameddine is one of my all-time favorite authors and indeed one of my most read authors, so I mean it as no small compliment when I say I think his latest novel is one of his very best. The True True Story is a perfectly witty and tender portrait of the chaos and dogged persistence of one catty Lebanese philosophy teacher and his lovingly annoying mother. Great voice, heavy topics, funny prose, and a rich cast of characters!
The Gates of Paradise by Taleb Alrefai, trans. Kay Heikkinen (Interlink, September 2)
This novel follows a wealthy Kuwaiti man whose youngest son has left home and joined a jihadi movement in Syria, breaking with his family. A sort of mystery-thriller that grapples with the intimate realities of political violence, this new translation sounds like a very distinct addition to SWANA literature in English!
It Had to Be Him by Adib Khorram (Grand Central, September 2)
Adib Khorram started as a prolific writer of queer YA romance, but in the last couple years has started writing more queer adult romance. His latest, It Had to Be Him, promises a fun vacation romance between Ramin and Noah, two recently single former classmates, who maybe always had a little bit of a crush on each other. Sounds like a perfect September reading jaunt for when you’re not quite ready for summer vacation to end!
Waseem by Lilas Taha (Arcade, September 2)
Waseem, the story of a disabled boy growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, opens with a truly striking line: “I shall tell you lies. You are going to believe them, and in the end, you will thank me for them.” In only the first few chapters of this novel, I’m captivated by the sharp narrative voice and can’t wait to see where it takes me!
Letters to Kafka by Christine Estima (House of Anansi Press, September 9)
Not sure what’s in the water but this is the second SWANA book about Kafka of the year?? No complaints from me! This one is a novelization of the affair between Milena Jesenská and Kafka that exists somewhere between truth and fiction. This promises to be a fascinating feminist historical reimagining! It’s also Estima’s debut novel, following a previous short story collection.
Exquisite Things by Abdi Nazemian (HarperCollins, September 23) - YOUNG ADULT
We’ve already established that I’m a big fan of classics adaptations, so of course I was delighted to hear about this YA romance inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray. A gothic historical tale of immortal boys in love, spanning a hundred and thirty years – this is the sort of unique book that makes me so excited about the types of stories young SWANA readers have access to now.
Dust Settles North by Deena ElGenaidi (Bindery Books, September 30)
Deena ElGenaidi’s debut novel follows two Egyptian American siblings navigating the loss of their mother against the backdrop of the Egyptian revolution. Spanning from Egypt to the US, this book is great for anyone interested in stories about grief, family secrets, and feminism with unruly characters.
Hush Little Children by Hayan Charara (Flexible Press, September 30)
I love Hayan Charara’s poetry, so I was really excited to see that he has a debut novel coming out this fall! Something of a mystery, something of a horror story about a strange wave of child suicides that strikes an unnamed city, this book is ultimately a sort of political horror about the way that violence shapes our reality and the stakes of living and having children in a hostile world. As important now as ever for SWANA literature!
The Salvage by Anbara Salam (Tin House, October 7)
I really enjoyed this historical gothic mystery about a Syrian Scottish woman who travels to a remote Scottish island for an archaeological diving expedition and gets tangled up in the ghostly traces that haunt the island and her own personal ghosts and relationship dramas. There’s a beautifully developed cast of characters, setting, and lore to this story, making it a really intriguing–and sometimes spooky–read!
The Night is Not for You by Eman Quotah (Run For It, October 7)
I’m a bit of a baby when it comes to horror, but I’ll have to make an exception for Eman Quotah’s second book. I loved her first book, Bride of the Sea, and the first chapter of this already had me hooked! The opening is gory and yet somehow deeply poetic. Definitely check this out if you’re into freaky djinn stories!
Female Fantasy by Iman Hariri-Kia (Cosmo Reads, October 14)
If you, like me, are a SWANA woman who grew up reading or writing fanfiction, this is a big year – there are not one, but two, forthcoming novels about SWANA women who write fanfiction. This one is a contemporary romance novel following Joonie, an Iranian-American fanfic writer who is trying to find love but can’t quite seem to fall for anyone other than her fantasy book boyfriend… or can she? I found this to be a fun, surprisingly wild, and unabashedly cringe romp with good banter!
The Slightest Green by Sahar Mustafah (Interlink, October 14)
The plot of this novel – centered on the family of a dying Palestinian prisoner and resistance fighter – sounds exactly like something I would really enjoy, rich with interpersonal intimacies and political exploration. I look forward to spending some time with Sahar Mustafah’s new novel, and am excited to see such exciting stories finding space at the only Palestinian-owned publishing house in the US!
The Competition of Unfinished Stories by Sener Ozmen, trans. Nicholas Glastonbury (Sandorf Passage, November 4)
This dryly funny, delightfully inventive, and politically sharp novel is so engaging to read, and brings something really unique to the field of SWANA literature in English. The creative use of footnotes and endnotes and meta elements of the unfinished stories within the story really bring this book to another level and ask the reader to engage the text deeply while always maintaining a degree of humor. If you like Rabih Alameddine’s style, this is a great book for you!
Supersaurio by Meryem El-Mehdati, trans. Julia Sanches (Hanover Square Press, November 25)
The second fanfiction girl book of the year! I’m so very excited for this one, which follows a 25-year-old with a terrible job at a supermarket chain who gets through the day by writing fanfiction about her coworkers. Julia Sanches translated one of my favorite books last year (Living Things by Munir Hachemi), also about a dejected young Spanish-speaking North African humorously navigating labor exploitation. So I have high hopes that this will be just as good!
Birds in a Gale by Ata Nahai, trans. Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo (Common Notions, November 25)
I’m fascinated by this Kurdish translation which tells the story of the years following the Iranian Revolution while blurring the lines between author and characters in an inventive meta form. Many of my favorite SWANA novels (e.g. Noor Naga’s If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English; Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters) play with metafiction, blurring reader, characters, and author to excavate power, so I imagine this will be a really exciting addition to that body of work.
POETRY
Wildness Before Something Sublime by Leila Chatti (Copper Canyon Press, September 2)
I adore Leila Chatti’s poetry and had the great pleasure of taking a workshop with her a few years ago, so I was thrilled to see that her second poetry collection is a collection based on her own exercises with poetry, playing with form and language and inspiration. For a poetry collection this book is truly massive, and it also includes substantial craft notes. What a gift to get to spend some time with!
The Nightmare Sequence by Omar Sakr and Safdar Ahmed (Nightboat Books, September 9)
A creative dialogue between the poetry of Omar Sakr and the visual arts of Safdar Ahmed, this collection aims to excavate the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, to examine the nightmarish reality of bearing witness to and living in complicity with such mass violence. The engagement of poetry and visual arts feels like a particularly powerful way to explore witness
You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine, edited and translated by Tayseer Abu Odeh & Sherah Bloor (Copper Canyon Press, September 16)
This bilingual poetry anthology features poems from writers currently living in Palestine, and specifically centers mostly recent poems from 2023-2024 that highlight the complex experiences of Palestinians in the midst of genocide. While the introduction to this text limits itself by failing to name Israel’s genocide as the explicit condition that shapes its contributors’ lives, the poems in this collection deserve to be read in their own right. From remembrance to imagined futures, the poems in this anthology are a powerful and timely invitation to shared struggle.
New York Trilogy by Peter Balakian (University of Chicago Press, October 6)
Pulitzer-winning Armenian poet Peter Balakian has a new book of poetry coming out that looks like a fascinating play with form. One long poem divided into three parts, tracing a narrative arc from the 1960s to the present, this collection reworks and combines poems from his previously published collections. I love to see poems evolve and become recontextualized, so I’m excited and intrigued by this!
Mercurial, or Is That Liberty? by Rachelle Rahmé (Fonograf Editions, October 14)
I wasn’t familiar with Rachelle Rahmé’s poetry before seeing that this debut collection was coming out, but after reading through some of the poems I’m really intrigued! There’s a really precise and innovative way she pieces language together – a writing style that forces the reader’s attention. I look forward to giving Rahmé’s work my attention.
NON-FICTION
Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America by Aymann Ismail (Doubleday, July 8)
Somewhat unexpectedly, two of my favorite books I read in the first half of the year – Hala Alyan’s I’ll Tell You When I’m Home and Iman Mersal’s Motherhood and Its Ghosts – were nonfiction books interrogating SWANA parenthood. Maybe I’ll finish out that trilogy with Aymann Ismail’s new memoir, which looks like a fascinating interrogation of Muslim American fatherhood.
Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide, edited by Yousef M. Aljamal, Norma Hashim, Zoe Jannuzi, & Noor Nabulsi (Haymarket, September 2)
This anthology is another important collection of works by Palestinians in Gaza, narrating their experiences of the ongoing genocide through stories of both horrific violence and communal resilience. This anthology is both an essential call to witness and action for those of us outside Gaza, and a critical archive of the genocide from Gaza’s storytellers.
Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love by Samin Nosrat (Random House, September 16)
Samin Nosrat, author of the famous cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which seemingly changed the lives of every amateur cook I knew in 2017, is finally out with a second cookbook this year! Emphasizing cooking as both ritual and a tool of community building, this looks to be a great resource for making cooking a joyful experience, from the kitchen to the shared table.
Letters from a Living Utopia: Reclaiming Liberation from Palestine to the World by Yaffa AS (Common Notion, October 7)
I’m really looking forward to this critical exploration of what it means to struggle for utopia, for liberation, to strive towards a futurity that we actively build every day. In an era that often feels marked by despair, I’m very interested in works that aim to work with and beyond that despair to imagine our political potential.
Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion by Şeyda Kurt (Verso, November 4)
I’m very interested in this book, a sort of personally grounded theory on the political function and perhaps utility of hatred. Kurt draws on her journalism and activist background as well as historical precedent to examine the political role of hate in anticolonial, feminist, abolitionist, and other struggles. As someone who loved Sara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of Emotion, I’m really intrigued!
Fire in Every Direction by Tareq Baconi (Washington Square Press, November 4)
I’m really looking forward to digging into this book more! For a memoir, it opens almost like a novel, with strong narrative components and even dialogue. I love this genre play already, as well as how Baconi’s background as a journalist and writer of history shines through in the archival excavation that opens this story. A creative exploration of Palestinian displacement, alienation, and queerness – this book will be a great way to close the year!
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Samia Saliba is calling on you to join the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed peoples globally, from wherever you are, in whatever material way you can. She is writing from somewhere in Los Angeles, where she is a PhD candidate in American Studies & Ethnicity. She is the author of the chapbook conspiracy theories (Game Over Books, 2025) and her poems appear in Apogee, AAWW, Mizna, and elsewhere. Find her at samiasaliba.com.