SWANA Authors

The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale

By: Aya Khalil

Narrated by: Dalia Ramahi

Length: 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Upon learning that the books with kids who look like her have been banned by her school district, Kanzi descends into fear and helplessness. But her classmates support her, and together—with their teacher’s help—they hatch a plan to hold a bake sale and use the proceeds to buy diverse books to donate to libraries. The event is a big success: the... Read more

Eyeliner

By: Zahra Hankir

Narrated by: Soneela Nankani

Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick

“Cosmetic, tool of rebellion, status signifier: Eyeliner has been all these and more. Moving through millenniums and across civilizations, Hankir gives the makeup its eye-opening due.” —The New York Times Book Review

“An impressive, rigorously researched, winding path through centuries and over... Read more

Dearborn

By: Ghassan Zeineddine

Narrated by: Sarab Kamoo & Qarie Marshall

Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. In Dearborn, a... Read more

I Will Greet the Sun Again

By: Khashayar J. Khabushani

Narrated by: Sean Rohani

Length: 5 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

“[A] masterful debut . . . a novel of survival and longing and love, and in many ways a modern portrait of an artist as a young man . . . a book written for us, we Iranian Americans whom you don’t often hear about.”—Porochista Khakpour, The Washington Post (Best Books of the Year)

“A triumph . . . a book of astonishing accomplishment and... Read more

Rana Joon and the One and Only Now

By: Shideh Etaat

Narrated by: Rasha Zamamiri

Length: 9 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

“A breath of fresh air and punch to the gut all rolled into one.” —Adib Khorram, award-winning author of Darius the Great Is Not Okay

This “lyrical” (Kirkus Reviews) coming-of-age novel for fans of Darius the Great Is Not Okay and On the Come Up, set in Southern California in 1996, follows a teen who wants to honor her deceased friend’s legacy... Read more

Watch Us Dance

By: Leila Slimani

Narrated by: Lara Sawalha

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

“A rich family saga . . . [written with] voluptuous lyricism and emotional precision.” —The Washington Post

The rebellions within an interracial family play out against the countercultural rebellions of the 1960s in this sexy, stylish, sophisticated new novel by the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny and In the... Read more

Between Two Moons

By: Aisha Abdel Gawad

Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar Young

Length: 11 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE, THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD, & THE BROOKYLN PUBLIC LIBRARY PRIZE • Set in the Arab immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan, "a moving look at family, survival, and celebration" (Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in... Read more

Something More

By: Jackie Khalilieh

Narrated by: Parmida Vand

Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

A contemporary teen romance novel featuring a Palestinian-Canadian girl trying to hide her autism diagnosis while navigating her first year of high school, for fans of Jenny Han and Samira Ahmed.

Fifteen-year-old Jessie, a quirky loner obsessed with the nineties, is diagnosed as autistic just weeks before starting high school. Determined to make... Read more

Only This Beautiful Moment

By: Abdi Nazemian

Narrated by: Vikas Adam, Fajer Al-Kaisi & Iman Nazemzadeh

Length: 11 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Stonewall Book Award Winner * A Best Book of the Year from the Guardian, ALA Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and BookPage From the award–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a sweeping story of three generations of boys in the same Iranian family. Perfect for fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club and Darius the Great Is Not Okay. 2019. Moud is... Read more

The Skin and Its Girl

By: Sarah Cypher

Narrated by: Victoria Nassif & Haneen Arafat Murphy

Length: 12 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt’s secrets in this “enchanting, memorable” (Bustle) debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.
 
“As beautifully detailed as a piece of Palestinian embroidery, this bold, vivid novel will speak to readers across genders, cultures, and... Read more

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I

By: Raja Shehadeh

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 5 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

2023 National Book Award Finalist for NonfictionA subtle psychological portrait of the author’s relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rightsAziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee. He was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this searingly... Read more

Who Gets Believed

By: Dina Nayeri

Narrated by: Ayesha Antoine

Length: 10 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Why are honest asylum seekers dismissed as liars? Former refugee and award-winning author Dina Nayeri begins with this question, turning to shocking and illuminating case studies in this book, which grows into a reckoning with our culture’s views on believability. From persuading a doctor that she’d prefer a C-section to learning to “bullshit... Read more

Ghost Season

By: Fatin Abbas

Narrated by: Dion Graham & Bahni Turpin

Length: 9 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

A dynamic, beautifully orchestrated debut novel connecting five characters caught in the crosshairs of conflict on the Sudanese border.
A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, the discovery foreshadows trouble to come. South Sudanese... Read more

The Bird Tattoo

By: Dunya Mikhail

Narrated by: Vaneh Assadourian

Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Helen is a young Yazidi woman, living with her family in a mountain village in Sinjar, northern Iraq. One day she finds a local bird caught in a trap and frees it, just as the trapper, Elias, returns. At first angry, he soon sees the error of his ways and vows never to keep a bird captive again. Helen and Elias fall deeply in love, marry and... Read more

The Bruising of Qilwa

By: Naseem Jamnia

Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi

Length: 5 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

In this intricate debut fantasy introducing a queernormative Persian-inspired world, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease that causes political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a gripping narrative with a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender,... Read more

More Than a White Man's Religion

By: Abdu Murray

Narrated by: Abdu Murray

Length: 6 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Read by the author.Though many today accuse Christianity of being a white, imperialistic religion, it is actually the source for cherished Western ideals of racial and gender equality. In More Than a White Man's Religion, author and speaker Abdu Murray shares stories from the Bible and his own experiences as a global apologist, a member of an... Read more

Mother of Strangers

By: Suad Amiry

Narrated by: Amin El Gamal & Lameece Issaq

Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR from NPR  • Set in Jaffa in between 1947 and 1951, this “fable-like historical novel of young love ... darkly humorous and touching” (Oprah Daily) is based on a true story during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and displacement of its people.

Based on the true story of two Jaffa teenagers, Mother of Strangers... Read more

Yalo

By: Elias Khoury

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 11 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Elias Khoury’s novel Yalo propels us into a fantastic universe of skewed reality that leaves us breathless to the last sentence.We follow the path of a young man, Yalo, who is growing up like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut during the long years of the Lebanese civil war. Living with his mother, who “lost her face in the mirror,” he falls... Read more

The Final Strife

By: Saara El-Arifi

Narrated by: Nicole Lewis & Dominic Hoffman

Length: 19 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

In the first book of a visionary fantasy trilogy with its roots in the mythology of Africa and Arabia that “sings of rebellion, love, and the courage it takes to stand up to tyranny” (Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree), three women band together against a cruel empire that divides people by blood.

“A game-changing new... Read more

These Impossible Things

By: Salma El-Wardany

Narrated by: Shazia Nicholls

Length: 10 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

In this “salacious, incisive, and unapologetically Muslim” (Blair Imani, activist and bestselling author of Read This to Get Smarter) novel, three best friends navigate love, sex, faith—and the one night that changes it all. It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents,... Read more

Man o' War

By: Cory McCarthy

Narrated by: E.R. Fightmaster

Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

A Stonewall Honor Book

An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans teen fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town.

Man o' wars are not jellyfish, and River McIntyre is not happy. River doesn't know why they're unhappy—though perhaps it has something to do with the way... Read more

Either/Or

By: Elif Batuman

Narrated by: Elif Batuman

Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

An instant New York Times bestseller!

A New York Times Notable Book of 2022

“Batuman has a gift for making the universe seem, somehow, like the benevolent and witty literary seminar you wish it were . . .This novel wins you over in a million micro-observations.” —The New York Times

 “Batuman is a genius, rendering human folly at its most colorful... Read more

Son of Elsewhere

By: Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Narrated by: Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Length: 6 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “funny and frank” (The New York Times) collection of essays on Blackness, faith, pop culture, and the challenges—and rewards—of finding one’s way in the world, from a BuzzFeed editor and podcast host.

“A memoir that is immense in its desire to give . . . a rich offering of image, of music, of... Read more

The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan

By: Salma Hussain

Narrated by: Asia Mattu

Length: 7 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Mona learns to find her voice over the course of a year that sees her immigrating from Dubai to Canada in this novel for fans of Front Desk by Kelly Yang.

Mona Hasan is a young Muslim girl growing up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when the first Gulf War breaks out in 1991. The war isn’t what she expects — “We didn’t even get any days off... Read more