Books like The return to Beirut by Andrée Chedid

Thomas L. Friedman’s award‑winning non‑fiction book offers an in‑depth look at Israeli‑Palestinian relations, the PLO, Israeli politics, Lebanese factions, and the role of journalism in the Middle East.

Portrait of an Eye by Kathy Acker is a provocative American experimental fiction that pushes the boundaries of narrative form and interrogates gender and power through unconventional storytelling.

"There was a time when they lived in the village of Beit Daras, and the sun was hot and the earth was rich. There were ruins dating back to the Crusades; now their homes, too, are ruins, and they are refugees in the small strip of Gaza. And yet, when young Khaled dies, and moves on to the afterlife, it is back in Beit Daras that he finds himself. And from here he may slip through history, watching the continuing the story of his matriarchal family. He sees his grandmother, Nazmiyeh, once the prettiest, baddest girl in the town, the eternal ringleader. The other girls felt she hung the sky. He sees his mother, Alwan, who loves quietly and strongly, and who sustains the family through her embroidery work, stitching the stars and moon in place. He sees the great-aunts and cousins, and his sunny little sister, Rhet Shel. Finally, there is the branch of the family that moves to Kuwait, and then to America, where Nur, his mother's cousin, begins to lose herself. She will return to Mediterranean shores to find her past, and rediscover the ties of kinship that transcend distance and even death. Born of the violent, troubling history which continues to rage forth and claim its dead, The Blue Between Sky and Water is very much a novel of survival, and of the vivid, powerful women whose world they manage, with each day, to enlarge and to enliven"--Publisher.

The book of The Arabian Nights has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people, even specialists in oriental literature, have a clear idea of when the book was written or what exactly it is. Far from being a batch of stories for children, The Arabian Nights contains hundreds of narratives of all kinds - fables, epics, erotica, debates, fairy tales, political allegories, mystical anecdotes and comedies. It is a labyrinth of stories and of stories within stories and of stories within stories within stories. Widely held in contempt in the Middle East for its frivolity and occasional obscenity, the Nights has nevertheless had a major influence on European and American culture, to the extent that the story collection must be considered as a key work in Western literature. A full understanding of the writings of Voltaire, Dickens, Melville, Proost and Borges, or indeed of the origins of science fiction, is impossible without some familiarity with the stories of the Nights. The Arabian Nights: A Companion guides the reader into this labyrinth of storytelling. It traces the development of the stories from prehistoric India and Pharaonic Egypt to modern times. It explores the history of the translation, and explains the ways in which its contents have been added to, plagiarized and imitated. Above all, the Companion uses the stories as a guide to the social history and the counter-culture of the medieval Near East and the world of the storyteller, the snake-charmer, the burglar, the sorcerer, the drug-addict, the treasure hunter and the adulterer.

"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the three witches,' discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left" --

In post‑Communist Laos, 72‑year‑old Dr. Siri Paiboun, newly appointed national coroner, uses his curiosity to investigate baffling murders while navigating a tense political landscape.

Kathy Acker’s "Don Quixote, which was a dream" explores whimsical quests and complex man-woman relationships within an American literary context.