- Imān Ḥumaydān (1956-, Lebanon) – Ḥayawāt Ukhrā (2010, English trans. Other Lives, 2014). This novel is centred on Mīryām, who after her terrifying experience of the Lebanese Civil War returns to Beirut to confront her traumatic past, including the brutal death of her brother and the disappearance of her lover during the conflict. The novel illuminates Mır̄yām’s trauma and her psychological scars as she attempts to move forward by revisiting Beirut, the centre of her tragedy, instead of running away from it (reference) (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Psychological Disorders: Trauma).
- Muḥammad Barrādah (1938-, Morocco) – Mithl Ṣayf Lan Yatakarrar: Maḥkiyyāt (1999, English trans. Like A Summer Never to Be Repeated, 2009). In this novel the author attempts to fuse fiction and autobiography through the story of the protagonist, first as a young student full of hopes and dreams in the Egyptian metropolis Cairo in the 1950’s, and then in its second half as an older man who revisits the city to attend seminars and conferences (reference). Using two different narrative styles (the former is written in the third person and the latter part in the first person) the novel describes the narrator coming to terms with the changes he perceives in Cairo as he is unable to reconcile the past and present.
- Amin Maalouf (1949-, Lebanon) – Les Desorientés (2013, English trans. The Disoriented, 2021). After fleeing the civil war in his country (described as an unknown country similar to Lebanon) and settling in Paris, Adam returns to his homeland to see his dying friend Murad and to arrange a reunion with his old friends. This reunion leads him “to discover the extent to which their common aspirations, political visions and revolutionary dreams have been shattered” (reference). Each of his friends had, after the end of the civil war, ascribed to different ideologies and religions, something that reflects the chaotic condition of their country and the region (also in 1975 – 1988 Lebanese Civil War: After the Civil War).
- Hisham Matar (1970-, Libya) – The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between (2017). This memoir portrays the author’s return to Libya in 2012, together with his mother and wife, where his father went missing twenty-two years before. The memoir begins in England, from where Matar describes the horrors of the Ghaddafi regime and Britain’s political relationships with the regime. The novel is about family, loss, and love as the author searches for the truth about his father, a prominent opponent of the Ghaddafi regime (reference). It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017, which hailed the novel as “a first-person elegy for home and father”. It also won the 2017 PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award and the 2017 Folio Prize (also in F: Children and Family Life: Parent and Child: Father and Child).
- ʿAlī Naṣṣār (1967-, Lebanon) – Sīrat Muslim fī Ḥānat Ārtīn (‘Biography of a Muslim in Hanat Arten’ 2017). After obtaining a university degree in Berlin, Muslim returns to his family home in Beirut alone, where he finds his father’s diary. The diary talks about Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, and by reading it, Muslim discovers his father’s opportunist manners as he changed with the political winds of the moment: in the 1960s he was a leftist communist, during the war he became rich, after the war he joined the liberalism movement, and he finally sympathizes with Hezbollah. Through the diary he also discovers that his mother was a Christian and in a relationship with Zaynab, his former nanny. Confused, he decides to return to Berlin (reference).
- Amjad Nāṣṣir (1955 – 2019, Jordan / Palestine) – Ḥaythu la Tasquṭ al-Amṭār (2010, English trans. Land of no Rain, 2014). Narrator of this novel, Adham, returns to his native Ḥāmiyyah, an imaginary Arab country run by military commanders, after twenty years of exile. Ḥāmiyyah’s regime allows his return because he may not have long to live. Adham fled into exile after being embroiled in a failed assassination mission. Upon return, he sees his homeland and his old family and friends and is faced with the rebellious poet Yūsif al-Khaṭṭaṭ, his name before he adopted the name Adham. Yūsif, his former self, is the hero in Amjad Nāṣṣir’s Hunā al-Wardah (‘Here is the rose’, 2017, see in G: Dysfunctional Governance: Oppression and Dictatorship and O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Arts).
- Istīlā Qāytānū’s (?, Stella Gitano, Sudan) short story collection al-ʿAwdā (2014, English trans. The Return, 2016) centres on Sudanese people who need to return to South Sudan after Sudan is partitioned into two different countries (also in 2011: Partition of South Sudan and North Sudan).
- Ibtisām Ibrāhīm Tirīsī (1959-, Syria) – ʿAyn al-Shams (‘Eye of the sun’, 2009). Protagonist of this novel, Nasmah, returns to Syria after years of exile in Sweden. But once she arrives, she is confronted with many painful memories, forcing her to evaluate the relationships she has had with men during her life.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Nadine Sinno. 2015. “Milk and Honey, Tabbūleh, and Coke: Orientalist, Local and Global Discourses in Alexandra Chreiteh’s Dāyman Coca- Cola.” MEL 18(2): 122-143, p. 123
- Christina Phillips. 2011. “The Game of Remembering: A Study of Narrative Strategies and the postmodern theme in Muḥammad Barrāda’s Novel Mithl Ṣayf Lan Yatakarrar.” MEL 14(1): 71-87, p. 71
- Hanan Ibrahim. 2018. “The question of Arab ‘identity’ in Amin Maalouf’s ‘’Les Desorientés’.” Journal of Postcolonial writing 54(6): 835-847, p. 836
- Rachel Cooke. 2016. “The Return by Hisham Matar – exquisite pain of a fatherless son.” www.theguardian.com, 3 July 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/03/hisham-matar-the-return-review (last accessed 2 February 2025)
- ʿAbd al-Lāʾim al-Salāmī. 2017. “‘Sīrat Muslim fī Ḥānat Ārtayn’ li-ʿAlī Naṣṣār: Hashāshah al-Tawāfuqāt al-Lubnāniyyah fī Marāyā al-Sird.” www.alquds.co.uk, 21 April 2017 https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%85-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A9-%D8%A2%D8%B1%D8%AA%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A-%D9%86%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D9%87/ (last accessed 17 November 2021)