Areej Gamal’s debut novel, translated into English by Addie Leak, follows two women who meet in Cairo amid the 2011 uprising and build a relationship shaped by displacement, family histories, and the search for home.
The novel alternates between past and present to explore themes of displacement, inherited family stories, and how domestic spaces (notably Arwa’s apartment on Champollion Street) become sites for imagining new possibilities.
Music and memory operate as connective forces: Arwa’s oboe playing and both women’s recollections of mothers and grandmothers drive emotional healing and the reconsideration of what ‘home’ can mean after loss.
Originally published in Arabic and winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award for Young Writers (2021), the English edition was released by the American University in Cairo Press in March 2026.
Their encounter becomes the beginning of a love story shaped as much by memory and loss as by desire. Their relationship unfolds against a city in political upheaval, where the revolution outside mirrors the emotional upheaval taking place between them. At the centre of the novel is the question of what it means to find home after displacement.
Their connection allows both women to confront the past while imagining a life beyond it. First published in Arabic, Mariam, It's Arwa won the Sawiris Cultural Award for Young Writers in 2021. The English edition, published by the American University in Cairo Press in March 2026, marks Gamal's first novel and her first book translated into English.
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