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Mona Yahia
Mona Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954, and escaped with her family to Israel in 1971. She studied psychology at Tel Aviv University and fine arts in Kassel, Germany.
Her first novel, When the Grey Beetles Took over Baghdad, (Halban Publishers, London, 2000) won the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for Fiction in 2001 in London, and is published in German and French translation.
Her latest publication, Snapshots: Istanbul Behind Closed Doors (Binooki, Berlin, 2019, in English, German, and Turkish) consists of a series of photographs of a historical khan in Istanbul, the architectural structure of which is transported into that of a short story.
She is currently working on the last stages of a new novel, Four Days, a family saga of four generations of a Jewish Arab family that spans the 20th Century and is set against the backdrop of the changing map of the Middle East.
Mona Yahia lives in Cologne, Germany, and writes mainly in English.
Her short story "Matches" is published in Banipal 72 – Iraqi Jewish Writers (Autumn/Winter 2021)
Contributor's Issues
The Tent Generations
Things I Left Behind by Shada Mustafa, translated by Nancy Roberts
Shadow of the Sun by Taleb Alrefai
Birds of Nabaa, A Mauritanian Tale by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Mansi A Rare Man in His Own Way by Tayeb Saleh (Banipal Books, 2020)
Tayeb Salih
Goat Mountain by Habib Selmi
Habib Selmi, author of Goat Mountain and 3 times shortlisted for the IPAF
The Mariner by Taleb Alrefai (Banipal Books, 2020)
Taleb Alrefai, author of Shadow of the Sun and The Mariner
Digital images
Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures by Fadhil al-Azzawi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Fadhil al-Azzawi
Poems of Alexandria and New York by Ahmed Morsi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Digital Banipal promotion B67
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Denys Johnson-Davies (1922–2017) 70 years translating Arabic literature
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
Mahmoud Shukair – see special feature of Banipal 70 (Spring 2021)
LATEST NEWS
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Link to poems by Mosab Abu Toha, published in Banipal 71 (Summer 2021), available to read online
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Link to poem by Liana Badr published in Banipal 74, now available as an online selection
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GRIFFIN PRIZE SHORTLIST 2023
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Banipal's first audiobook* * *
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Banipal Book Club
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