Eight Novels of Displacement, Eight British Postcodes: A Winter Reading Map

Winter reading lists have a habit of collapsing under their own ambition. A 700-page family saga sounds wonderful in November; by mid-January half the group has stalled on page 90. So here is a different sort of list: eight novels from the Arab world and its diaspora, each paired with a British place where the book's preoccupations — arrival, translation, the awkward business of belonging — feel most visible. Read them in order or jump about. Borrow what you can, buy the rest, and keep the conversation local.

1. Leeds and Bradford: Silence Is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar

A Syrian woman, mute since the crossing, sits at a window in an unnamed English city and watches the street. She writes a column about what she sees; nobody knows who she is. AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti-American who has spent years in Britain, refuses the refugee-narrative shortcuts and gives us something stranger and better: a novel about looking. The city is never named, which is precisely why it could be Leeds, Bradford or Sheffield. Where to find it: The Borough Press paperback, widely stocked; check Leeds Central Library and any library app that carries e-books.

2. Aberdeen: Minaret by Leila Aboulela

Najwa grows up in Khartoum with drivers and servants, loses all of it to a coup, and lands in a London bedsit in her early twenties. Later she follows a family north to Aberdeen, works as a nanny, and finds faith in a city of grey stone. Aboulela, long resident in Aberdeen, wrote one of the first novels in English to take religious devotion seriously rather than as a symptom. A quiet book that rewards a second read. Where to find it: Bloomsbury paperback; most Scottish library services hold it.

3. London, Edgware Road: Only in London by Hanan al-Shaykh, translated by Catherine Cobham

Four strangers on a flight from Dubai to London: a Lebanese woman leaving a marriage, a Moroccan woman with plans, an English businessman, and a man travelling under a name that isn't his. Al-Shaykh, who has lived in London for decades, writes the Edgware Road as a place of transaction, tenderness and comic misunderstanding. Cobham's translation keeps the jokes intact, which is harder than it sounds. Where to find it: Bloomsbury; also on audiobook.

4. Any university town: Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth

Zuhour is an Omani student in Britain, grieving a grandmother whose life she only half knows. Alharthi — who shared the International Booker with Booth in 2019 for Celestial Bodies — writes in short, circling chapters that shuttle between a British bedroom and a village in Oman. A strong pick for groups who like a book that feels like a conversation rather than a plot. Where to find it: Scribner UK paperback; ask your library to order it if the shelves are bare.

5. London, Hackney to Haifa: Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

Sonia, an actor in her thirties, comes back to London from a relationship going nowhere, then travels to Haifa and is pulled into a production of Hamlet in Arabic. Hammad writes about performance, exile, and the difference between visiting a place and living in it. The London sections are precise and unglamorous; the rehearsal scenes are among the best things written about theatre in years. Where to find it: Jonathan Cape and Vintage; available through most library e-lending services.

6. London, St James's Square: My Friends by Hisham Matar

Three Libyan friends in London, and the long shadow of the 1984 siege at the Libyan embassy — a real event that left PC Yvonne Fletcher dead and reshaped how Britain treated Libyan students. Matar's novel is about friendship, literature and the cost of being watched. It is the most London book on this list, and the one most likely to send your group to a search engine for an hour afterwards. Where to find it: Penguin paperback.

7. London and Cairo: The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif

Isabel Parkman arrives in London carrying a trunk of papers from 1900s Egypt; Amal al-Ghamrawi, her host, finds her own family inside them. Soueif's Booker-shortlisted novel is a slow, generous winter read about love across languages and the tangle of Empire. Long, yes — but worth the weeks. Where to find it: Bloomsbury; secondhand copies are plentiful and cheap.

8. London and Gaza: The Lady from Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun, translated by Elliott Colla

Waleed has lived in London for 38 years and is flying back to Gaza for one last visit. At the airport he meets Dana, an Israeli woman, and the novel builds itself out of what they can and cannot say to each other. Al-Madhoun, long based in London, writes exile as a daily ache rather than a dramatic rupture. Where to find it: Telegram Books; scarce new, so try interlibrary loan or a careful secondhand search.

Where to get them

Public libraries remain the cheapest route: check the catalogue, request an interlibrary loan, and use the e-lending apps your service subscribes to. If you would rather buy, the London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury, News from Nowhere in Liverpool, Five Leaves in Nottingham and Lighthouse in Edinburgh all carry Arab fiction in translation and will order what they don't have. For secondhand, check the edition details carefully — make sure you are getting a translation and not an English-language original by the same author.

“People assume the translation is the obstacle,” one London translator told me. “Usually it is the best thing in the book. Start with the translator's note.”

A bookseller in Sheffield made a similar point in blunter terms: a novel in translation is a collaboration, and the group that talks about both names on the cover always has the better evening.

The ArabBook winter 2026 book-club shortlist

• Silence Is a Sense — for groups who want to argue about narrative voice
• Minaret — for anyone tired of religion as background noise
• My Friends — for readers who like fiction threaded with real history
• Enter Ghost — for the theatre crowd
• The Lady from Tel Aviv — for the group that enjoys a proper argument

Pair each with a walk if you can: the Edgware Road, the streets around Aberdeen's university, the edge of St James's Park. The novels don't need the scenery, but the scenery helps.