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Ibtisam Barakat
Ibtisam Barakat is an author, poet, translator and artist from Palestine. She lives in the United states and writes in both English and Arabic.
Her memoir in English about growing up in Ramallah, Tasting the Sky, a Palestinian Childhood, won more than twenty awards and honors, including the International Reading Association's Best Book in 2008, and Best Literary Book on the Middle East, and was designated an American-Library association Notable Book, and a Book for a Global Society. It is now available in six languages.
Her book, in Arabic, Al-Ta' Al-Marbouta Tateer, about a letter in the Arabic alphabet who refuses to do what it is supposed to do in a word, won the Anna Lindh Foundation's award: Read Here, There and Everywhere, for best literature for young readers in Arabic in 2011.
She was awarded the 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the Children’s Literature category for her book Al-Fatah Al-Laylakeyyah (The Lilac Girl), published by Tamer Institute for Community Education (Palestine) in 2019. The beautifully illustrated story is about a young Palestinian girl who loves to paint but who has lost her home due to war. Through recreating her house in a rainbow of watercolours she finds freedom in the world of her imagination and creates beauty from pain.
For more information about Ibtisam Barakat, please visit her website: www.ibtisambarakat.com
Contributor's Issues
The Cinderellas of Muscat by Huda Hamed (Banipal Books, 2025)
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
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)
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
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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