Bareed Al-Layl (Night Mail)

Published by Dar Al-Adab, The Night Mail (Barid Al-Layl) by award-winning Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat—winner of the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction—is an intensely moving epistolary masterwork. The novel is constructed from a series of unsent or intercepted letters written by exiles, refugees, and outcasts traversing the margins of the modern Arab diaspora. Each letter tells a fragment of a fragmented life: a lover addressing an absent partner, a fleeing youth confessing his sins, a prostitute recounting her trauma, and a fugitive hiding in an airport room. These isolated voices never reach their intended recipients, yet they intersect like crosscurrents in a stormy sea. Barakat strips away political clichés to examine the psychological toll of displacement, borderless isolation, and moral ambiguity, presenting letter-writing as the ultimate, desperate act of claiming one's humanity amidst absolute loss.

It is an award-winning, masterfully crafted work of contemporary Arabic fiction that offers an intimate, non-judgmental exploration of exile, home, and the human voice fighting against oblivion.

Ideal for readers of translated modern Arabic literature, scholars of diaspora and refugee narratives, fans of epistolary fiction, and anyone interested in award-winning Mediterranean and Middle Eastern literature.