By admin 
The year 2024 witnessed the publication of many distinguished Arabic novels, which won the admiration of critics and readers alike. The most prominent of these novels are:
Gambling on Lady Mitsy’s Honor (Ahmed Al-Morsi)
مقامرة على شرف الليدي ميتسي (أحمد المرسي)
An Egyptian writer born in 1992. He holds a BA in Media from Cairo University, Radio and Television Department, and works as an editor for the Rotana Network as a journalist, and a program producer on Dream TV. He also works for a number of Egyptian and Arab newspapers, including Al-Watan newspaper.
He has published three novels: “What Remains of the Sun” (2020), “Written” (2021) and “Gambling on Lady Mitsy’s Honor” (2023). The first novel won second place in the Sawiris Cultural Award in 2021, in the Young Writers category.
About the novel
The novel “A Gamble for Lady Mitsy’s Honor” tells the story of four characters, and its events take place in the world of betting, where a Bedouin boy, an English lady, a retired officer, and a horse broker meet in a betting ring. These four bet on one horse, and each one of them has his own hopes that he draws for that horse, which is expected to be a glimmer of their hopes, a solution to their tragedies, and a cure for their wounds.
In the twenties of the last century, in the largest horse track in Egypt, four destinies are linked, and they are united by the word hope. The lady is the owner of hope, the Bedouin boy is the driver of that hope, while the broker is the one who is responsible for the buying and selling operations, while the officer is the one who bets on this hope. He hopes that it will be a real hope and not just a mirage.
In this novel, the writer does not merely narrate historical events that took place in a previous time in Egypt. Rather, through this novel, he conveys psychological feelings that still control many of us to this day. He was also able to address the audience in simple language, but with the use of a group of rhetorical images that helped him make the reader imagine the world in which those events took place.
Al-Fassifasai (Issa Nasri)
الفسيفسائي (عيسى ناصري)
A Moroccan novelist and short story writer, born in Mrirt, Morocco, in 1985. He works as an Arabic language teacher in secondary education. He holds a master’s degree in “Linguistic Development and Issues of Literary Terminology” from Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez. His published works include: “The Metamorphosis of the Fangs” (a collection of short stories, 2016) and “Al-Fassifasai” (2023), his first novel. He won the Moroccan Writers Union Award for Youth in 2017, in the short story category, for his short story collection “Blindness of Specters”, and the Ahmed Bouzfour Award for Young Short Story Writers in the Arab World, 2014 session, for his collection “The Metamorphosis of the Fangs”.
About the Novel
Mosaic is the art and craft of making small cubes and using them to decorate floor and wall spaces, and the way this novel is written is similar to mosaic pieces collected from different places and times.
The novel “Mosaic” is a mosaic consisting of three pieces. The first piece immerses us in the depths of history, and illuminates the era of the Roman occupation of Morocco, where we see with our own eyes the steadfastness of the Moors in the face of the invaders, and their creativity in making mosaics as a symbol of resistance and a symbol of high art.
The second piece takes us to the modern era, where we get to know the American writer Ariadna, who travels to Morocco in search of a lost mosaic painting that belongs to her family. During her journey, Ariadna is exposed to For exciting adventures and gets involved in a passionate love story with the young Moroccan Jawad.
The third piece delves into the memoirs of Nawal Al-Hanawi Al-Ghanimi, a psychiatrist, who tries to treat Ayash Al-Hafeyan from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ayash Al-Hafeyan is a man who was unjustly sentenced to prison and torture for ten years, on charges of stealing an ancient statue from Volubilis in 1982.
She also tries to treat Tahami Al-Ismaili, a man who accidentally ran over his child with his car, so his wife abandoned him and he became a troubled alcoholic to the point that he was called Bacchus, the god of wine in mythology.
The writer avoided telling the stories in succession, and tended to scatter their chapters in a sequential manner until the three stories are completed at the end of the mother novel “The University and the President” at the same moment, so that Issa Nasri forms a harmonious mosaic that presents a complex view of the past and the present, and raises questions about identity, freedom, love and memory.
I Heard Everything (Sarah Al-Sarraf)
سمعت كل شيء (سارة الصرّاف)
Iraqi novelist, born in 1975 in France. She graduated in 1997 from the Faculty of Arts at Al-Mustansiriya University, Baghdad, Department of English. She worked as an editor in the news department of Al-Iraqiya Satellite Channel, then moved to the United Arab Emirates to complete her career as a journalist, broadcaster and writer. Among her works is “I Heard Everything”, which was published in 2022.
About the novel
The narration in this novel alternates between the diaries of the child Ishtar, whose parents died in a traffic accident, and the diaries of Aunt Aida, who works in the magazine, where love ignites between her and the magazine supervisor Abbas. Through this alternation, the atmosphere of Iraq in the 1980s is drawn, from the fronts of the Iraq-Iran war to Baghdad and Basra to Sulaymaniyah, and the Arab, Kurdish and Armenian components merge.
The novel narrates the childhood of an Iraqi girl “Ishtar” from the Al-A’dhamiyah neighborhood in the eighties of the last century, where she lost her father in Moscow in a traffic accident, and a friendly family took her back to Baghdad. To live on Taha Street in Iraq with her grandmother Fakhriya and her nanny Fatima.
Ishtar narrates what she saw, heard and felt from the stories of grandmothers, aunts, relatives, neighbors, houses and the country.
It also revolves around the war and its social and psychological effects on all homes. The novel does not have a main plot, but rather subplots for its secondary heroes such as Fatoum, Mawaddah, and Raghad, headed by the love story of the widow Aida with her married boss.
The writer takes us from the state of loss, pain and individual loneliness that Ishtar experienced to the state of loss, pain and collective loneliness. The writer depicts the woes of the Iraqi society as a result of the Iran-Iraq war, and the destruction, killing, bloodshed and killing of all aspects of life and joy that this war left behind.
The novel also includes documentation of Baghdadi customs, the culture of Iraqi society, and some of the rituals and traditions that Iraqi groups are famous for. It also includes intellectual, religious, social, psychological, and political questions and references, without complexity or symbolism.
Mask in the Color of the Sky (Bassem Khandakji)
قناع بلون السماء (باسم خندقجي)
A Palestinian novelist born in 1983 in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. He studied journalism and media at An-Najah National University in Nablus.
He was famous for writing short stories until his arrest in 2004, when he was 21 years old. He completed his university education from inside the prison by enrolling at Al-Quds University, and his thesis was on Israeli studies in political science.
He has many poetry collections and novels, the most important of which are: “Rituals of the First Time” (2010); “Breaths of a Night Poem” (2013); “Narcissus of Isolation” (2017); “Eclipse of Badr al-Din” (2019); “Breaths of a Disappointed Woman” (2020); The novel “A Mask the Color of the Sky (2023). This novel won the Arabic Booker Prize for the year 2024, and the publisher of the novel, Rana Idris, owner of Dar Al-Adab, received the award on behalf of the captive Khandaji.
About the novel
The novel talks about Nour, an archaeologist residing in a camp in Ramallah, who finds a blue identity card in the pocket of an old Israeli coat, so Nour assumes the mask of the Israeli character, Or.
Nour exploited the “blue identity card” and made it a mask that enabled him to register at the Israeli Albright Institute of Archaeological Sciences, to excavate antiquities and explore the depths of buried and stolen Palestinian history.
In his novel “A Mask the Color of the Sky” – which came in 240 pages of medium size and a cover bearing a picture of the Dome of the Rock and a piece of cloth embroidered with the colors of Palestinian heritage – Khandaji continues to narrate the events of Nour as a Jew who assumes the character of “Or” who continues his research as part of a mission to the Israeli Kibbutz “Mish’ar HaEmek” built on the lands of the displaced village of Abu Shusha In the 1948 Nakba, the struggle to prove Palestinian identity is renewed, and the issue becomes like a cultural clash with the occupation every day.
Khatam Salma (Rima Bali)
خاتم سليمى (ريما بالي)
A Syrian writer, born in 1969, in Aleppo, Syria. She studied commerce and economics at the University of Aleppo, and worked in the field of tourism and hotels. She left Syria in 2015, after the outbreak of war in Aleppo, and the turmoil in Syria. She preferred to reside in Madrid, Spain.
Among her works are “Milagro”, which means “miracle” in Spanish; And the novel “Ghadi Al-Azraq” in 2018, which will be published in Spanish under the title “El Girasol Azul”, and “The Danish, (2019); and “Khatem Salma” (2022); and “Nay fi al-Takht al-Gharbi” in 2003.
About the novel
Years before the outbreak of the Syrian war, and between the Spanish cities of Aleppo and Toledo, the destinies of Salma, Lucas and Shams al-Din intertwine, and despite their different cultural backgrounds, future aspirations, and diverse backgrounds and visions, they all agree on their love and affection for the Syrian city of Aleppo.
In the novel, the paths of three characters intersect, bringing together Salma and Shams, who have had a deep love story since childhood, but life circumstances separate them and distance them from each other. In contrast, Lucas meets Salma in Aleppo and falls in love with her, but Salma is still attached to Shams al-Din. Salma falls into confusion between the lover and the beloved; between the rich and influential past, and the present Grey tinged with loss and fighting.
The narrator follows the lives and destinies of a group of characters, as events intertwine between the past and the present, revealing old family secrets that affect people’s lives. It also sheds light on the social and political changes that took place in Syria during that period, and how Aleppo turned into a deserted city, groaning under the yoke of destruction and devastation.
In the end, the novel emphasizes that life is full of challenges, but it is worth living. Therefore, the novel “The Ring of Salma” urges us to hold on to hope and strive to achieve our dreams, no matter how difficult the circumstances.