Exclusively on the Wasafiri website, purchase 4 titles for just £33 — plus a Wasafiri tote bag.

Guest Edited by Rehana Ahmed and Nadia Atia, and featuring Bina Shah, Hamja Ahsan, Nisha Ramayya, Latifa Ayad and more, House of Wisdom: Libraries and Literatures of Islam collects writing that uses the libraries that were the hallmark of Islamicate empires around the globe as its cornerstone to reflect creatively and critically on Islamic literary culture. For this bundle, we looked back through the archive to find issues from Wasafiri that engage with ideas of archiving, Islamic literature, and the impact of reading and publishing upon broader society, featuring writers like Leila Aboulela and Robin Yassin-Kassab.

Issue 108: House of Wisdom: Libraries and Literatures of Islam

Winter 2021

Guest Edited by Rehana Ahmed and Nadia Atia

Editorial on libraries and literatures of Islam
Interviews with Ahdaf Soueif and Kamila Shamsie, Nur Sobers-Khan
Articles on archiving Islam in Nadeem Aslam’s libraries; the craft of the catalogue in Sinan Antoon’s The Book of Collateral Damage; libraries, literature, and literacy in Palestine; restoring Medieval England’s Arabic books to view
Art Essay on Wafaa Bilal’s 168:01 and Edmund de Waal’s library of exile
Fiction byLatifa Ayad, Mohammed Barber, Bina Shah
Poetry by Moniza Alvi, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Zaffar Kunial, Alycia Pirmohamed, Nisha Ramayya
Life Writing by Hamja Ahsan
Review Essay on textual responses to Muslim migration and displacement
Reviews of Diana Darke, Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe; Caroline Rooney, Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left after the Uprisings; Samira Shackle, Karachi Vice; Sabina Akhtar, ed., Cut from the Same Cloth: Muslim Women on Life in Britain

Issue 88: Print Activism in Twenty-First-Century Africa

Winter 2016

Fiction by Efemia Chela and Felwine Sarr
Poems by Mervyn Morris, Nick Makoha, Ladan Osman, Daouda Ndiaye, Ola Nwaozuzu-Ekechukwu and Dorothea Smartt
Interviews with Sulaiman Adebowale, Marcelin Volunda Etoa, Elisabeth Daldoul, Marie-Paule Huet, Ali Hussein, Mamadou Aliou Sow and Sarah White
Articles on African publishing in the twenty-first century, a survey of fourteen African publishers, how books matter and publishing for pleasure in Zimbabwe
Art Essay on digital art and the Tunisian Revolution
Reviews of Goh Poh Seng's Tall Tales and MisAdventures of a Young Westernized Gentleman, Anthony Reed's Freedom Time, Chigozie Obioma's The Fisherman, Caryl Phillips's The Lost Child and Sébastien Doubinsky's The Song of Synt

Issue 80; Beautiful Resistance: A Special Issue on Palestine

Winter 2018

Fiction and Poetry by Susan Abulhawa, Selma Dabbagh and Adania Shibli
Poems by Najwan Darwish, Falastine Dwikat, Nathalie Handal, Suheir Hammad and Remi Kanazi
Interviews with Omar Barghouti, Imraan Coovadia, Rabai al-Madhoun and Gillian Slovo
Essays by Raja Shehadeh, Githa Hariharan, Nancy Kricorian, Sapphire, Linda Spalding and Ed Pavlic
Art Essay on Samia Halaby: Breathing Poetry into a War-torn Landscape
Reviews of William Sutcliffe's The Wall, Lipika Pelham's The Unlikely Settler, Adhaf Soueif's Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed, Kamal Boullata's Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present, Ghassan Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, Louisa Waugh's Meet Me in Gaza, Kevin Powers's Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting,
Hassan Blasim's The Iraqi Christ, Vahni Capildeo's Utter and Vikram Chandra's Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software

Issue 69: General

Autumn 2011

Fiction by Robin Yassin-Kassab, Merih Günay and Jenny Robson
Poems by Dashen Naiker, Sue Butler, Bryan Brunton and Amina Saïd
Interviews with Alain Mabanckou and Jeet Thayil
Art Essay on Abbas Kiarostami
Articles on parents in South Asian American literature, Leila Aboulela's The Translator
Winners of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2011
Reviews of David Farrier's Postcolonial Asylum: Seeking Sanctuary Before the Law, Siddhartha Bose 's Kalagora, Ronnie McGrath's Data Trace, Abdulrazak Gurnah's The Last Gift and Fawzia Afzal-Khan's Lahore with Love: Growing up with Girlfriends, Pakistani-style