Twin sisters Randa and Lamis live in the besieged Gaza Strip. Inseparable to the point that even their mother cannot tell them apart, they grow up surrounded by the random carnage that characterizes life under occupation. Randa, who wants to be a journalist, writes to record the devastation around her, taking pictures of martyred children. Meanwhile, their beloved neighbor Amna quietly converses with all those she has lost, as she plans the wedding of Lamis and her son Saleh. With their menfolk almost entirely absent, it is the women who take center stage in this poignant novel of resilience, determination, and living against the odds.

What is it like to live under terrorists every day in one of the most war-torn regions in the world? What does it feel like to take a desperate journey through hell and high seas, leaving everything behind and totally risking your life just to save it? What do people think about just before they are going to die? Do any new dangers lurk ahead for refugees who have arrived safely to another country by boat? Raed Zanoon’s true-life thriller about escaping the deadly Gaza Strip to Australia on a small wooden fishing boat showcases these experiences and more. Raed’s story proves that if you want to survive war, if you want to overcome destructive regimes from radicalism to racism, if you want to be truly happy and free, then you must arm yourself with the most powerful weapons possible - humour, heart, and hope.

International Booker Prize finalist and "one of the Arab world's most innovative novelists" (Roger Allen) delivers a brilliant retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa The year is 693 and a tense exchange, mediated by an interpreter, takes place between Berber warrior queen al-Kahina and an emissary from the Umayyad General Hassan ibn Nu'man. Her predecessor had been captured and killed by the Umayyad forces some years earlier, but she will go on to defeat them. The Night Will Have Its Say is a retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the seventh century CE, narrated from the perspective of the conquered peoples. Written in Ibrahim al-Koni's unique and enchanting voice, his lyrical and deeply poetic prose speaks to themes that are intensely timely. Through the wars and conflicts of this distant, turbulent era, he addresses the futility of war, the privilege of an elite few at the expense of the many, the destruction of natural habitats and indigenous cultures, and questions about literal and fundamentalist interpretations of religious texts. Al-Koni's masterly account of conquest and resistance is both timeless and timely, infused with a sense of disaster and exile—from language, the desert, and homeland.

Set in late nineteenth-century Benghazi, Najwa Bin Shatwan’s powerful novel tells the story of Atiqa, the daughter of a slave woman and her white master. We meet Atiqa as a grown woman, happily married with two children and working. When her cousin Ali unexpectedly enters her life, Atiqa learns the true identity of her parents, both long deceased, and slowly builds a friendship with Ali as they share stories of their past. We learn of Atiqa’s childhood, growing up in the “slave yards,” a makeshift encampment on the outskirts of Benghazi for Black Africans who were brought to Libya as slaves. Ali narrates the tragic life of Atiqa’s mother, Tawida, a black woman enslaved to a wealthy merchant family who finds herself the object of her master’s desires. Though such unions were common in slave-holding societies, their relationship intensifies as both come to care deeply for each other and share a bond that endures throughout their lives. Shortlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Ficiton, Bin Shatwan’s unforgettable novel offers a window into a dark chapter of Libyan history and illuminates the lives of women with great pathos and humanity.

Declared a terrorist menace yet elected to government in a free election, Hamas now stands as the most important Sunni Islamist group in the Middle East. How did Hamas grow to be so powerful? Who supports it? What is its future? This essential insight into Hamas answers these questions. Milton-Edwards and Farrell have between them spent decades researching and reporting from the heartlands of the Hamas movement and gained unrivalled access to the world of Islamic resistance and radical Islam in its potent Palestinian form. Drawing on their frontline experiences of recent events, their access to secret documents from the western intelligence community and interviews with leaders, militants, and commanders of Hamas' armed battalions, they reveal the full story of Hamas and the future of political Islam in the Middle East. Milton-Edwards and Farrell show Hamas to be a broad and thus more powerful regional phenomenon than previously thought, and by doing so contend that it is now time to rethink the war and the nature of Islam and its role in the Middle East. Beverley Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queens University, Belfast. She is the author of books such as Contemporary Politics in the Middle East (2006) and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a People's War (2009). Prize-winning journalist Stephen Farrell is Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times and was previously Middle East correspondent for The Times.

Ruqayya was only thirteen when the Nakba came to her village in Palestine in 1948. The massacre in Tantoura drove her from her home and from everything she had ever known. She had not left her village before, but she would never return. Now an old woman, Ruqayya looks back on a long life in exile, one that has taken her to Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and given her children and grandchildren. Through her depth of experience and her indomitable spirit, we live her love of her land, her family, and her people, and we feel the repeated pain of loss and of diaspora.

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider political order? The First Political Order is a groundbreaking demonstration that the persistent and systematic subordination of women underlies all other institutions, with wide-ranging implications for global security and development. Incorporating research findings spanning a variety of social science disciplines and comprehensive empirical data detailing the status of women around the globe, the book shows that female subordination functions almost as a curse upon nations. A society’s choice to subjugate women has significant negative consequences: worse governance, worse conflict, worse stability, worse economic performance, worse food security, worse health, worse demographic problems, worse environmental protection, and worse social progress. Yet despite the pervasive power of social and political structures that subordinate women, history—and the data—reveal possibilities for progress. The First Political Order shows that when steps are taken to reduce the hold of inequitable laws, customs, and practices, outcomes for all improve. It offers a new paradigm for understanding insecurity, instability, autocracy, and violence, explaining what the international community can do now to promote more equitable relations between men and women and, thereby, security and peace. With comprehensive empirical evidence of the wide-ranging harm of subjugating women, it is an important book for security scholars, social scientists, policy makers, historians, and advocates for women worldwide.