Migration and alienation are among the most affecting themes in the human imagination and have deep roots in contemporary literature. Novels about migration often look beyond the journey from one place to another to explore questions of identity, belonging, homeland and diaspora.
In a world battered by war, poverty and despotism, the “journey north” — or into exile — turns from a dream of salvation and justice into an experience that exposes the contradictions of both West and East.
These eight contemporary novels each approach this complex human experience in their own way, giving literary expression to its tragedies and thwarted dreams.
1. Bright Days of Sun — Miral al-Tahawy (2023)
The novel is set in two neighbouring districts in the land of dreams, where residents inhabit separate worlds. In the low-lying “Bright Days of Sun,” the poor look up at the wealthy living on the hills of “Eternal Paradise.”
The poor work as miners, toilet cleaners, gardeners, carers for the elderly, domestic servants, contractors, butchers and grocers. They are migrants living on the margins, in the filthiest areas of the promised paradise they reached by legal or illegal means. They fled their past, only to find themselves at the bottom of society and settle into life there.
The novel depicts the collapse of dreams and ambitions, and the false aesthetic images fashioned by their creators, who “realize that absence is one of the laws of the life they live.” Everyone is haunted by the question: “Who can break the circle of misery? Who can rise?” The novel was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2023.
2. The Awaited Mahdi of Paris — Mohamed Ismail (2025)
The novel explores the complexities of migration, identity and “political Islam” in France. Its characters’ lives intersect across Paris and its impoverished south: an ambitious politician seeking votes, a marginalised migrant who left his country because “the cheapest thing we have is human life,” and a descendant bearing Nostradamus’ occult legacy.
Through a realist narrative, the novel asks fundamental questions about integration and the burden of disavowing crimes committed by one’s co-religionists. It calls for a reassessment of the relationship between guest and host, challenging longstanding fears of the “other”, the outsider, in the Western collective imagination.
The novel examines the paralysing culture of waiting, embodied in the character of the “Mahdi,” and shows how Eastern and Western myths and prophecies become political tools, used to exploit ignorance and mobilise people who “were not accommodated by their countries, so they left them for a dream that let them down.”
It also explores how leaders are created and how they use victimhood and mutual fears — xenophobia, or fear of foreigners, and Islamophobia, or fear of Islam. Some migrants live in isolation, whether by choice or compulsion, clinging to illusions of salvation and waiting for a saviour.
3. Nights of Saint-Denis — Lana Abdul Rahman (2026)
The novel creates a fictional space akin to a basilica filled with human testimony, offering a panoramic, moving portrait of marginalised lives in Saint-Denis, France. Arab migrants and refugees fleeing homelands ravaged by war and despotism encounter homeless French people seeking to escape the pressures of the established order. They all find shelter in the historic palace of Le Chateau, covered in dust and graffiti, where their shared life combines freedom and chaos.
The novel reflects on identity, belonging and the burden of estrangement. It also questions the justice of a global order governed by borders and residence permits. Its collective heroes are people whose hopes for a “more orderly life” in the West have been thwarted. Instead, they find themselves at the bottom of the “land of light”, pursued and threatened with deportation because “no home endures.”
The novel celebrates human resilience and asks fundamental questions about the right to exist and live freely beyond systems of classification and oppression.
4. Spring and Winter — Atef al-Haj Saeed (2019)
The novel examines the experience of seeking asylum in Europe, particularly France, in detail. It follows refugees from illegal boat journeys organised by smugglers to the homelessness they face while waiting for their applications to be accepted. Acceptance allows them to settle and begin a new life, with all the accompanying paperwork and complications.
Its protagonist is a Sudanese refugee who recounts his suffering to a psychiatrist in a narrative that breaks the fourth wall to address the reader. His story begins when he survives drowning off the Italian coast and finds himself in a refugee camp hospital. He later meets and marries a French woman, who eventually leaves him.
The novel explores prostitution networks targeting refugees, Sudanese ghettos in Europe and the barons of asylum. The protagonist’s perspective changes, and he begins to view the society around him through Western eyes. He despises people like himself, describing them as rats that have filled the streets. He is repulsed by the way they eat, by their urinating in the street and by what he sees as their sexual voracity in a society that represses desire. He goes so far as to say: “I wished that my son would not be saddened or oppressed in the future because he has a lowly origin.”
Some time after his arrival, he complains to his doctor about his failure to integrate. The doctor tells him: “Migration is a harsh test. No human being can bear its psychological losses.”
5. What Strange Paradise — Omar El Akkad (2023)
The novel opens with a gripping scene: a child lying on the shore of a European island opens his eyes as waves gently comb his hair. Around him lie scattered belongings and bodies.
Two men approach. One shouts at him in a language he does not understand, and he decides to run. The scene recalls the image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian Kurdish child who drowned on a Turkish beach in 2015 while trying to reach Europe clandestinely.
Through a powerful narrative grounded in reality yet sustained by hope, the novel tells of the tragedy of Syrian refugees before and after they reach shore alive. Its chapters alternate between two periods: before and after.
It takes readers inside refugee facilities, depicting the harsh treatment, racism and discrimination refugees face. Some in the West regard asylum as a form of colonialism and say: “Every colonialism is a handful of people on boats.”
Another passage reads: “If they see you coming off the boat with one of these crosses hanging around your neck, that will do you more good than all the identity cards in the world.” Originally written in English, the novel won several literary awards in the West, most notably Canada’s Giller Prize.
6. The Arab Neighbourhood — Osama Allam (2019)
A small Arab state in the heart of the West: the novel develops this inventive, engaging premise from its opening pages. Arab migrants who have settled in Canada declare an Arab neighbourhood an independent state after riots triggered by an Arab victory over the US in a football match — a result with considerable resonance among the Arab public.
The striking opening draws readers into an imagined world grounded in reality. At its centre is Rahman Zaaboot, a cafe owner who becomes the nation’s leader and inspiration, surrounded by family and friends.
Can homelands, with their traditions, customs and spirit, be transplanted elsewhere? The question at the heart of Egyptian American writer Osama Allam’s novel resurfaces in Egyptian French writer Mohamed Ismail’s “Bab El Oued”, where we read: “Do we really leave our homelands to forget them, or to rebuild them around us as we wish?” Will Zaaboot succeed in recreating the Arab homeland abroad?
7- A Swiss summer – Inaam Kachachi (2024)
Four Iraqis arrive in exile carrying burdens and illusions. At a Swiss clinic, a doctor from their own country, Blasim, treats them for ideological addiction. He uses medication to address obsessions with ideologies whose adherents remain committed to them even after those ideologies have collapsed, remaining prisoners of their illusions and refusing to acknowledge that collapse.
Forgetting is a blessing, but their illness is a form of Iraqi stubbornness. Treatment requires a purge of entrenched convictions — from Arab nationalism and leftist beliefs to evangelism and love of Ahl al-Bayt — through medication and cathartic sessions.
Blending reality and fantasy, the novel asks whether people “crazed” by old ideas can begin a new life. Can the four reconcile when each once carried a dagger in his belt to slaughter the others? Or is “memory a tumor in the brain for which there is no cure”? The novel was longlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in literature for established writers in 2026.
8. And I Wander Naked — Tarek El-Tayeb (2018)
Through the lives of two brothers in Egypt and Austria, the novel explores what has happened to the body in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings. The younger brother pleads for help to reach the imagined bliss of the north. But the novel depicts another, hidden side to Austria, marked by racism and cruelty. Frightening stories lie beneath the surface of a reckless, ostensibly civilised world, whose inhabitants appear cheerful but are inwardly and persistently grim.
The older brother goes from being an army brigadier in his homeland to working as a nude model in Europe after his paintings are rejected. Meanwhile, he follows reports that more than 300 African migrants have drowned on a boat making an illegal crossing to Italy. His brother’s body may be among them, joining a graveyard of boats and watery coffins. Fishermen have come to haul up a drowned person’s body with every net or line — people who died caught between life and death.
Together, these eight novels offer rich, varied accounts of the psychological and human experiences of marginalised people seeking a place for themselves in imagined alternative homelands. They bear witness to the cruelty of alienation, the beauty of human resilience and the tragedy of collapse. They also show how literature provides space to understand others and mend the wounds exile leaves behind.