31 New SWANA Books in 2025: January-June Releases
By Samia Saliba
I had so much fun compiling a list of anticipated SWANA releases for RAWI last year, and several of the books I wrote about for that list turned out to be among my absolute favorite reads of recent years — Munir Hachemi’s Living Things, Hisham Matar’s My Friends, Tracy Fuad’s PORTAL, and Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! were particular standouts. This year, there is once again a rich collection of new releases by SWANA authors that I can’t wait to spend some time with in 2025.
There are many firsts in this list — debuts, first forays into new genres, first works in English, etc. — as well as many familiar voices. I’m also excited to see how many of these books offer really new and innovative sorts of stories, reflections, and poetics. As SWANA literature in English expands every year, it is always wonderful to see it move in new directions and push the limits of the types of stories we can tell (and have published) further and further.
This piece covers 31 particularly exciting releases from January-June of 2025, broken down into fiction (including YA), non-fiction, and poetry. I hope to be back in July to cover more new releases for the latter half of the year! 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.
FICTION
Good Girl by Aria Aber (Hogarth, January 14)
I adored Aria Aber’s poetry book Hard Damage and I’m a huge supporter of poets writing novels generally, so Good Girl has been on my radar for a while. I’m excited to finally get a chance to read it and have seen a lot of early praise so far! A messy coming-of-age story of an Afghan girl growing up in Berlin, this story seems both familiar and wholly original.
Too Soon by Betty Shamieh (Avid Reader Press, January 28)
Another debut novel by a writer who works in multiple genres — this time a playwright! If you enjoyed Isabella Hammad’s recent novel Enter Ghost, the plot of this book, where a diaspora Palestinian helps put on a Shakespeare play in the West Bank, might seem a little familiar. But this book has a lot else going on, including arranged romance, family sagas, and relationships between mothers and daughters. It looks like a fun read!
The Dissenters by Youssef Rakha (Graywolf, February 4)
This may be my personal most anticipated book of the year. A story of grief, political history, feminism, family secrets — this book seems to have everything I usually look for in a novel. Rakha has written many novels originally in Arabic, but I believe this is his first English language novel, and I look forward to digging into its pages.
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (Tiny Reparations Books, February 25)
I am cautiously intrigued by this novel, which offers a humorous take on a project of ISIS bride deradicalization from an author who worked on similar projects as an academic before leaving her former career. Since my own academic work focuses on critical terrorism studies and critiques radicalization and deradicalization theories and tactics from a gender studies perspective, I perhaps have a particular investment in this topic! But this is certainly a new sort of story, and I’m interested in what it has to say.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tor, March 4)
Amal El-Mohtar co-authored the hugely popular speculative queer romance-adjacent novel This is How You Lose the Time War, but this is her solo debut and it looks excellent. Like This is How You Lose the Time War, it’s a speculative novel, but leans more into fantasy/fairytale than sci-fi, and tells an enchanted and mysterious tale of sisterhood.
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon, March 4)
Laila Lalami has written across many genres including historical fiction, mystery, and non-fiction, but I believe this is her first outwardly speculative/SFF book. Despite the speculative landscape of a near-future where the main character is detained based on analysis of her dreams, Lalami’s narrative remains a deeply familiar one, tackling pervasive technology, surveillance, and state control.
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (Scribner, March 4)
A family saga centered on the chaotic, brilliant, beautiful lives of women is a classic format of the SWANA-American literature genre (if such a thing exists), but each take on it is different, funny, lovely and all of them feel sort of like being at home. The Persians looks like a great debut novel and an excellent addition to the SWANA women family saga canon.
Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani (Algonquin, March 11)
As an LA-based SWANA current PhD student, I may be a bit biased when I say this, but this novel about an LA-based SWANA recent PhD grad embarking on a project to marry rich looks SO fun. I can’t wait to read this one! If it’s as good as it seems, I already know what I’m getting all my PhD friends for Christmas next year…
Lovers of Franz K. by Burhan Sönmez, trans. Sami Hêzil (Other Press, April 1)
Like many of this year’s novels, this book feels like a totally new and a little bit out-there kind of story in the best way. Characters whose cult-like love of Kafka leads them to join a resistance movement and attempt an assassination? What more could you ask for! Though Sönmez has written many books in Turkish, this is his first Kurdish language novel, perhaps a salient addition to its political themes.
The Burning Heart of the World by Nancy Kricorian (Red Hen Press, April 1)
Another exciting new family saga, this novel about an Armenian family from Beirut centered around the Lebanese Civil War has at least a superficially similar premise to one of my favorite novels of the last few years, The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan. There’s few things I like more in a book than a funny, sad, complicated story of multiple generations grappling with war, displacement, and personal struggles, so I’m really looking forward to reading this one.
Huda F Wants to Know?: A Graphic Novel by Huda Fahmy (Dial Books, April 1) – YOUNG ADULT
This is the third installment of Huda Fahmy’s YA graphic novel series and it grapples with a high school-aged main character dealing with her parents’ divorce. It’ll always be amazing and brilliant and cool to me that books like this exist (even more so when they’re graphic novels!) for SWANA young people in ways that felt so out of reach when I was that age not all that long ago!
The Ashfire King by Chelsea Abdullah (Orbit, April 15)
The second book in Chelsea Abdullah’s fantasy series, The Sandsea Trilogy, is finally coming out this year and continues the story of Loulie, a merchant in a world where jinn are hunted, who gets sucked into complex power struggles. This second book finds Loulie trapped in the realm of jinn and promises chaos, magic, and intrigue. As always, I’m happy to see more SWANA authors producing “Arabian fantasy” works that are grounded in actual histories and cultural mythologies when so much of the genre’s popularity has happened without SWANA authors at the helm.
You Started It by Jackie Khalilieh (Tundra Books, May 20) – YOUNG ADULT
Jackie Khalilieh’s second YA romance novel looks really charming and fun and exceedingly relatable. Who amongst us hasn’t been a type-A Arab girl with anxiety and chaotic insecurity about dating? One day, hopefully soon, we will get an Arab girl To All the Boys-style teen romcom film adaptation and I think Jackie Khalilieh’s work might just be what gets us there.
Summerhouse: A Gay Thriller by Yigit Karaahmet, trans. Nicholas Glastonbury (Soho Crime, May 27)
I’m not usually a big reader of thrillers, but this book, which combines messy love triangle drama with crime, might just be the exception. I’m totally intrigued by the plot and like many of the novels coming out this year, this story feels genuinely fresh and new to the landscape of SWANA lit. Extra exciting that it’s in translation! This one is definitely on my list.
Salutation Road by Salma Ibrahim (Mantle, June 3)
Yet another really innovative story, this book follows a young Somali woman living in London who is transported into an alternate reality where she witnesses the life she would have lived had her parents never left Somalia. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen themes of diaspora, displacement, alternate forms of belonging tackled in such a direct and speculative way, and I find the approach really refreshing!
NON-FICTION
Hot Date!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, from Party Food to Everyday Feasts by Rawaan Alkhatib (Chronicle Books, February 4)
I am on record saying that no SWANA books list would be complete without a cookbook, and this year that role is fittingly filled by a date-based cookbook. This book also promises snippets of historical context about the history and use of dates from SWANA to Palm Springs, which is particularly intriguing to me because I wrote a poem about this very history a couple years ago. I also admitted in that poem that I’m not a big dates fan, but I do love a good dates-based dessert, so I’ll have to give this one a try.
Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd (Haymarket, February 11)
Mohammed El-Kurd’s Perfect Victims builds on work he’s been producing for years, and particularly over the last year, which explores the limits of how Palestinians and the Palestinian struggle are perceived and made legible. El-Kurd writes in the tradition of Edward Said’s formative work “Permission to Narrate,” expanding an essential critique for our time.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Knopf, February 25)
Omar El Akkad’s non-fiction debut, prompted by bearing witness to the genocide in Gaza as well as El Akkad’s long career as a journalist, attends to the profound alienation many of us are too familiar with by now, of existing in a country which would seek to kill you if you were on the other side of a border, and will probably still seek to kill you slowly on this side of it. It asks if and how we might seek possibility in a desperate time.
All the Parts We Exile by Roza Nozari (Knopf Canada, February 25)
I know Roza Nozari’s beautiful art from instagram but am not yet familiar with her writing. This memoir looks really exciting! I’m especially enamored with the concept of a memoir that is also about someone else, Nozari’s mother, and how she seeks to weave her own history and her mother’s history together to explore belonging, queerness, exile, love, and the stories we tell about all of it.
Voyage, War, Exile by Etel Adnan (Litmus Press, March 15)
How precious and lucky that we still get to experience new Etel Adnan book releases after her passing. Published in what would have been her 100th year, this book combines three essays of Adnan’s written between 1984 and 1995 and reflecting on her life in and beyond Beirut. I know that her words will resonate with our current realities and keep her present with us in times of disaster.
The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza (Catapult, April 22)
I’m really excited for Sarah Aziza’s debut book — her essays and published letters to George Abraham since the start of the genocide have been both such a balm and an unsettling. Her writing on Palestine always challenges me and gives me new ways of thinking and being in community. I expect her memoir, on personal and familial traumas, eating disorders, and the echoes of history in the body, will continue to do just that.
Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson (Profile Books, June 3)
Like Raja Shehadeh’s classic Palestinian Walks, this book, co-written with his wife Penny Johnson, promises to be a brilliant reflection on Palestinian history and existence that is deeply grounded in place and in the landscape of Palestine. Amidst so many powerful books on Palestine coming out recently, I haven’t seen a ton of talk about this one yet, but I hope it’s on everyone’s radar!
I’ll Tell You When I’m Home by Hala Alyan (Avid Reader Press, June 3)
Hala Alyan is one of my very favorite writers of both poetry and fiction, so I’m thrilled to see her make her non-fiction debut. If her often very personal poetry is any indication, her memoir promises to be a stunning, devastating, sharp book with absolutely magical prose. There’s something very special about seeing an author tackle similar themes across three genres, feeling the familiar contours of narrative laid over distinct forms.
POETRY
Moon Mirrored Indivisible by Farid Matuk (University of Chicago Press, March 17)
What I love about Farid Matuk’s poetry is how he writes with such precision and attention to language, sound, and the narrow space of the line. This is especially true in the poem from which this new collection draws its title, so I really look forward to seeing where he takes these sounds and feelings.
Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece by Nasser Rabah, trans. Emna Zghal, Khalid Al-Hilli, Ammiel Alcalay (City Lights Books, April 15)
Translated poetry so rarely gets the attention it deserves, so I hope everyone will check out this bilingual edition of Nasser Rabah’s poetry, the first full translation of Rabah’s work into English. This book combines previously published works from his Arabic collections with new poems written since October 2023, chronicling the unfolding genocide. You can get a taste of some of Rabah’s poetry here and elsewhere online.
come from by janan alexandra (BOA Editions, April 29)
This year’s poetry releases include a ton of debuts or first US publications from SWANA poets and janan alexandra’s come from is one such debut I’m personally really excited for. alexandra’s poetry is really playful with language and often moves fluidly between English and Arabic to destabilize both, such as in these poems. I can’t wait to have the space of a full-length collection to dig into her work!
We Had Mansions by Mandy Shunnarah (Diode Editions, Spring)
Mandy Shunnarah’s debut poetry collection is coming out with Diode this spring and looks to be another treat in Palestinian poetry this year. I love how the titular poem plays with form, drawing on the structure of the play to build a poetic scene, and I look forward to seeing where the rest of the book carries these themes and this style.
Dark Star Requiem in the Key of Nova by Hind Shoufani (Diode Editions, Spring)
US-based readers may be more familiar with Hind Shoufani’s work in film — she co-wrote the wonderful 2020 Palestinian short film The Present — but she is also a poet with several previous works published in Beirut! This will be her first collection published in the US, and its poems cross time and geographies as an ode to place, exhaustion, grief. I love how her long, winding, irreverent poems like this one suck you in and I can’t wait to see more of this in her collection.
Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, edited by George Abraham & Noor Hindi (Haymarket, May 13)
This anthology has been a long time in the making and I know that when I finally get to read it, it will fill me with every human emotion. George Abraham and Noor Hindi are brilliant editors who have thoughtfully collected poems from numerous Palestinian writers, known and unknown, living and martyred. Can’t wait to hold this beautiful collection in my hands.
conspiracy theories by Samia Saliba (Game Over Books, June 10)
Shameless self-promo moment — my own chapbook is coming out this year! It’s about and after the X-Files, if you’re into that sort of thing, but also if you aren’t. The brilliant Jane Wong says of the chap: “From the X-Files to familial inheritance to questioning the self/selves to the terror of the surveillance state, each poem acts as a kind of ghostly guide through what makes us both alien and human.” For a preview, here’s two poems from the chap.
TERROR COUNTER by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi (Deep Vellum, June 24)
Fargo Tbakhi is one of our greatest living poets without a full-length collection, but that tragedy will soon be made right with the release of TERROR COUNTER this June. Tbakhi writes with an unmatched political precision and poetic inventiveness, pushing form and language to their limits. There are many poems I could point to that support this claim - here is one of my favorites. I so look forward to digging into this collection, which I know will challenge me and sit close to the heart.
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Samia Saliba (she/her) 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. To learn from Palestinian resistance the everyday practice of refusal. She is writing from somewhere in Los Angeles, where she is a PhD student in American Studies & Ethnicity. Her poems appear in Apogee, AAWW, Mizna, and elsewhere, and her debut chapbook is forthcoming with Game Over Books in 2025. Find her on twitter @sa_miathrmoplis.