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In this thriller-cum-jigsaw puzzle, two storylines play out across continents and true historical events as American novelist Christine McMillan and student Rachid Bennacer aim to solve The Secrets of Folder 42, while chess champion Zouhair Belkacem, shunted off to medical school in Moscow, returns to Morocco in time for a spectacular crunch day.

Iraqi Said Jensen, living in Norway, is forever haunted by the ghost of his father, killed by the Iraqi regime before he was born, and nightmarish visions. On being called to Baghdad where a mass grave, possibly holding his father's remains, will be opened, he thinks about the peaceful cherry orchard his neighbour Jakob was laid to rest in.

Impoverished Egyptian teacher Helmy is desperate for a better life for himself, his wife and little boy, seeing no future at home in Cairo. He dreams of working in oil-rich Kuwait and its boom in construction being the answer. He manages to borrow the huge cost of a visa and is on his way there, with no idea of the hellish nightmare awaiting him.

Birds of Nabaa follows the physical and spiritual journeys of its narrator from his beginnings in a remote Mauritanian village, whose flocks lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where his work as an embassy accountant takes him. Inspired by the Sahara of his childhood and devoted from an early age to the vagabond life of the pre-Islamic poets, the narrator's constant life on the move in search of the inner stillness known only to desert dwellers leads him always to the music, song and poetry so much part of Mauritanian life and the spiritual universe of Sufism around them. Along the route the reader encounters the holy-fool sheikh, Rajab the teacher, and Hussein the poet, who all in their own way stand against the tribal values that the hero also rebels against. We are also drawn into the revolutionary world of Abdurrahman, whose eternal search for freedom sees him quit the Qatari police and his job at a Nouakchott library as well as failing in the business of turning scrap metal into gold, but holding firm to his proto-socialist principles. Fortune tellers and cowrie shell readers drop hints of an uncertain future and the interpretation of a frightening dream does not auger well. As desertification and drought take hold, we see the paradise of southern Mauritania and of Nabaa gradually decline and the waves of migration, always a feature of life in the Sahara, intensify, the novel ending with a shocking presentiment.

Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah brings to life an ancient story after a single line in Aramaic on a tombstone fired his imagination. His epic poem awakens two lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina, the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at rest beside Hadrian's Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their tale.

A unique feature on Iraqi Jewish writers. For centuries, Iraqi Jews were key contributors to Iraq's rich social and cultural tapestry before a tragic end with the massive transfer-emigration and forced displacement of Iraqi Jews in the 1950s to Israel. Texts of universal questions of belonging, exile and diaspora, translated from Arabic and Hebrew.

Young Palestinian author Shada Mustafa's debut novel interrogates the memories of growing up, falling in love, that force themselves to be reckoned with. Ceaseless questioning to revisit the "things" she has left behind, lets the narrator redeem her life from the inexplicable pain and loss of childhood in an occupied and divided land and family.

Selected, introduced, and translated by Mohammed Sawaie, these works by Palestinian poets over seven decades give expression to Palestinian experience under Israeli rule and occupation, and the experience of dispersion and displacement from their homeland following the 1948 Nakba - Arab-Israeli War - and the subsequent wars of 1967 and 1973.

An exploration into the recent civil conflicts of Algeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina through Salim, a journalist, and Ivana, a young Bosnian woman, both having fled the destruction, hatred and atrocities of their countries to try to build a new life in Slovenia. A fictional memorial to the thousands of dead and 'disappeared', and to the survivors.

Ahmed Morsi is a renowned painter as well as art critic, journalist, and consummate poet, with his debut collection published at the age of 19. "Poems of Alexandria and New York", Morsi's first volume in English translation, and introduced, by Raphael Cohen, captures the modernity at the heart of all his works and his Surrealist humour.

The "Writing Jerusalem" feature celebrates the city's great storyteller Mahmoud Shukair, a gift for his 80th birthday, with articles, translations, reviews and memories. New fiction from Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian and Lebanese authors. Guest writer Gibraltarian poet and translator Trino Cruz. Plus interview with editors of the Maktoob project.

Taleb Alrefai spotlights Kuwait's pearl-fishing history in this enthralling fictional re-telling of the final treacherous journey at sea of famous Kuwaiti dhow shipmaster Captain Al-Najdi, with flashbacks to the awesome pull of the sea on Al-Najdi since childhood and his voyages around the Arabian Peninsula with Australian sailor Alan Villiers.

Habib Selmi's debut novel, from 1988, now in English translation. A young man's journey to Goat Mountain, a forlorn, dusty, desert Tunisian village, begins in a dilapidated old bus. "I enjoyed this book. I liked its gloomy atmosphere, its strangeness and sense of unfamiliarity. Eerie, funereal, and outstanding!" - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

This affectionate memoir by Tayeb Salih of his exuberant and irrepressible friend Mansi shows, with humour, wit, and 20th-century personalities centre stage, another side to the great author, renowned for his classic novel Season of Migration to the North. "A flavourful and entertaining memoir" - Boyd Tonkin

"Travels" features five Arab travel writers: Iraqi Farouk Yousif in New York; Tunisian Hassouna Mosbahi in Andalucia; Algerian Said Khatibi in Sarajevo; Moroccan-Dutch Abdelkader Benali in Tangiers and Syrian-Danish Monir Almajid in Japan. Plus profiles on Jordanian Kafa Al-Zou'bi and British poet Linda France, and other fiction and poetry works.

A Boat to Lesbos, by Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah, was written as Syrian refugees endured frightening journeys across the Mediterranean before arriving on the small island. Set out like a Greek tragedy, it is dramatic witness to the horrors and ravages they suffered, seen through the eye of history, the poetry of Sappho and the travels of Odysseus.

?Shepherd of Solitude is the first English collection for Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser, translated and introduced by the foremost translator of contemporary Arabic poetry into English Khaled Mattawa, with the poems selected by poet and translator from the poets Arabic volumes over the years 1979 to 2004.

Mahmoud Shukair's first major publication in English translation enthralls, surprises and shocks as one of the world's most original of storytellers excels in exposing the surreal moments in the ordinary and the mundane, the limits of human frustration and patience, and the intricacies of tiny daily obsessive practices. Brimming with humour that ranges from the funny and the farcical, to satire and black comedy, with a painter's eye for colour and detail, Shukair's stories present a unique commentary on the power of the human spirit to see beyond the particular.The collection includes the author's two fascinating autobiographical commentaries "Hemingway in Jerusalem" and "My Journey in Writing".Here is the brilliantly observed clutter and comedy of everyday lives, the lives of ordinary people pushed up against an iron occupation and fighting for survival with all the comic and moving strategems of the human imagination. Shukair's gift for absurdist satire is never more telling than in the hilarious title story which turns and pulls the leg (or the moustache) of the occupation, in the classic tradition of Palestinian satire. ¿ Judith KazantzisTranslated from the Arabic by Issa J. Boullata, Elizabeth Whitehouse, Liz Winslow and Mahmoud Shukair. Mahmoud Shukair was born in 1941 in Jerusalem, and grew up there. With a Masters degree in Philosophy and Sociology he worked for many years as a teacher, journalist and editor-in-chief of cultural magazines. He was jailed twice by the Israeli authorities, lasting nearly two years, and in 1975 was deported to Lebanon. He returned to Jerusalem in 1993 after living in Beirut, Amman and Prague. He is the author of 25 books, nine short story collections, 13 works for children, a biography and a travelogue. He has written six drama series for TV, three plays and countless newspaper and magazine articles.Some of his short stories have been published in French, Spanish, Korean and Chinese, as well as English.