Seven books to understand the Arab Spring

Layla AlAmmar is a writer and academic from Kuwait. She has a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her short stories have appeared in the Evening Standard, Quail Bell Magazine, the Red Letters St. Andrews Prose Journal, and Aesthetica Magazine, where her story "The Lagoon" was a finalist for the 2014 Creative Writing Award. She was the 2018 British Council international writer in residence at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival. Her debut novel, The Pact We Made, was published in 2019. She has written for The Guardian and ArabLit Quarterly. She is currently pursuing a PhD on the intersection of Arab women's fiction and literary trauma theory.

AlAmmar's new novel is Silence Is a Sense.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books about life in the aftermath of revolution and civil war, including:

The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton

This kaleidoscopic novel chronicles the immediate aftermath of the Egyptian revolution that toppled Mubarak’s nearly 30-year regime. Moving from the ecstatic highs in the wake of January 25th to the power grabs and crackdowns that came a few years later, we follow Khalil and his friends as they witness and document this attempt to re-fashion their world. The novel uses lyrical prose alongside actual tweets and headlines in a poignant illustration of the chaos of the time.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue