Sarab

November 1979. Violence has broken out in the holiest site of Islam after a charismatic rebel and his followers have attempted to announce the coming of the Redeemer. Amid the horror and chaos of the siege, Sarab, an insurgent, kidnaps a French officer. Caught between hostility and mutual attraction, the two forge an unusual relationship, each confronting the traumatic history that has brought them to this point—and how they might help each other overcome the memories that haunt them. In this sweeping narrative ranging from the Najd desert to the green heart of Paris, award-winning writer Raja Alem examines the nature of identity, love, faith, and ultimately what it means to be human.

Raja Alem was born in Mecca and now lives in Paris. Her works include ten novels, two plays, biography, short stories, essays, literary journalism, writing for children, and collaborations with artists and photographers. She has received many awards in the Arab world and in Europe, including from UNESCO for creative achievement in 2005 and from the Lebanese Literary Club in Paris in 2008. In 2011, she became the first woman to win the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction, also known as the “Arabic Booker,” for her novel The Dove’s Necklace.Leri Price is a literary translator based in the UK. In 2017, her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives in the Kitchens of This City (Hoopoe, 2016) was short-listed for both the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)’s National Translation Awards and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.