Author: Najwa Bin Shatwan
Translator: Sawad Hussein
Publisher: Dedalus
Paperback
Burley Fisher Books of the Year 2025
Elena says… Not from this year but very good. Najwa Bin Shatwan pumps life into characters that this century has dehumanised to kill and forget. These funny would-be-slapstick-if-they-weren’t-nightmarishly-real vignettes of downtrodden lives in Libya are stunning. When the neighbours’ daughter’s lover falls through the skylight of a regimented female-dominated household in the patriarch’s absence, the internalised violence of the military state is domesticised and simultaneously unravelled…