Note: This is another one I actually read (and reviewed) last year (in 2021), but hesitated to publish this critical review, seeing as the b...

In brief: Dunya Mikhail's The War Works Hard   (translated from Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow) is a good book that was one of the more inc...

The Baghdad Clock 's cover and marketing is both exactly what it seems like and not quite what it's sold as. With a blurb that seems...

You know how I often say that I feel "unqualified" to write reviews of certain books? Sometimes that's because a book just isn...

Jokha Alharthi's Man Booker International winner  Celestial Bodies  (tr. Marilyn Booth) is an odd and special book, made odder by my o...

You know those books that you almost don't want to read because of how they suddenly seem to represent everything that's going on in...

This review is one of the hardest I've had to write in a very long time. It's a review tinged with disappointment, discomfort, and u...

If I had to give Memoirs of a Woman Doctor  by Nawal el-Saadawi (translated by Catherine Cobham) a one-line review, I'd probably say t...

Jumping around continents a bit, but it's definitely time to broaden our horizons a bit. Let's see what Northern Africa's women ...