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Finding love, comfort, and hope amid uncertainty, two young, Egyptian women reveal themselves to one another in this dreamlike and award-winning debut
It is during the 2011 Egyptian revolution that Arwa and Mariam meet in a subway station near Cairo University. Arwa has returned from Germany to join the protests, and their chance encounter is to change the course of Mariam’s sheltered existence.
They tell each other the stories of their mothers and grandmothers, the histories that have brought them to this point. Mariam was born in Saudi Arabia, and first set foot in Egypt after both her parents were killed in a car accident. Arwa’s mother also died a tragic, early death, and she, traveling in the opposite direction as Mariam, left Egypt to escape.
This is a mesmerizing and otherworldly debut novel about finding salvation and finding oneself, despite the anguish and traumas of the past. It pivots on the present moment of Arwa's and Mariam’s unexpected union, and at its heart is a recognition of the women who came before them.
"Two women —Arwa and Mariam —have a chance meeting in a subway station in Cairo during the 2011 Egyptian revolution that changes both of their lives as they connect over grief, trauma, and self-discovery."—Autostraddle
"In the enigmatic historical novel Mariam, It’s Arwa, two women’s stories collide with rhapsodic urgency."—Foreword Reviews
"The secret to Areej’s captivating writing is its resemblance to a melody that no one dare turn off . . . I could not stop reading.”—al-Kalima
“Areej Gamal has succeeded in depicting the inner world of her female characters and their struggles.”—Independent Arabia
“The wounds that Areej Gamal opens up in this novel are many, yet she touches upon them with the hand of a skilled surgeon.”—al-Ketaba
Areej Gamal is an Egyptian writer, translator, and film critic. Mariam, It’s Arwa won the Sawiris Cultural Award for Young Writers in 2021. She has published three collections of short stories and won first prize in the Goethe Institute Cairo’s short story competition. This prize-winning story was translated into German and another of her stories was published in English translation in An Alternative Guide to Getting Lost. Mariam, It’s Arwa is her first novel and her first book to be translated into English.
Addie Leak is an editor and literary translator from French, Arabic, and Spanish. Her work has appeared in such outlets as Words Without Borders, The Common, The Huffington Post, and The Georgia Review. She has also translated A Mask the Color of the Sky by Bassem Khandaqji. She received her MFA from University of Iowa in literary translation, was a Fulbright scholar, and currently lives in Amman, Jordan.