On this week’s episode, I’m speaking to Israeli, anti-zionist historian and academic, Professor Ilan Pappé . Professor Pappé  has dedicated dedcades of his life to writing and speaking about the Nakba of 1948, shedding light on what actually happened and what a grave catastrophe it was and continues to be. He calls for a one-state solution and for the right of return of all Palestinians. His books have sought to tackle the myths around Israel and Zionism, providing much needed insight, information, thoughtfulness and nuance reflections. He is one of the major historians of our times writing on Palestine. As the current aggression and genocide in gaza continues well into its tenth month, Ilan encourages us to understand the root of the violence – the illegal occupation of Palestine. 

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. His latest book is Ten Myths About Israel. His books also include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge. Pappé’s research focuses on the modern Middle East and in particular the history of Israel and Palestine.

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This week, my guest on the show is the incredibly talented, Safia Elhillo. Safia’s work always leaves me mesmerised and craving for more. In her beautiful poetry, she explores themes of belonging, identity, home, friendship, love, pain, suffering, and so much more.  

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which received the the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award, Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022), and the novel in verse Home Is Not A Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor. 

Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work appears in POETRY Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others

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On the show this week, I spoke to Nigar Alam about her stunning debut Novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, which I absolutely love. In this episode we talk all about Partition voices an d stories, Pakistan, class, identity, friendships, displacement and so much more.

Author Nigar Alam was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent her childhood in Turkey, Nigeria, Italy, Kenya, Indonesia and the United States. She currently lives in Minnesota and teaches at Anoka-Ramsey Community College.

“Under the Tamarind Tree” is Alam’s debut novel and is set in the seaside city of Karachi. 

The main character, a woman named Rozeena, opens the novel sitting on her veranda near a garden shaded by palm and Ashoka trees, where she receives a call from someone she knew in the past. 

The rest of the book fluctuates between a dual timeline and follows Rozeena and her friends in the decades after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.



I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
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On this week’s show, I’m speaking to Ela Lee, author of the debut novel, Jaded. Now, I absolutely loved Jaded. I cried several times while reading it, and found a sense of commoradory, validation and being seen that I didn’t even know was missing. Ela writes a multi-layered story of her character, Jade, who is British-Korean-Turkish. Having gone to a prestigious University, Jade is now a 20-something professional lawyer working in a law firm in London. One night, a devastating incident takes place that sparks a huge internal and external unravelling for Jade, and the novel explores themes of identity, privilege, race, patriarchy, corporate success and so much more. 

Ela Lee is a London-based author. She studied Law at the University of Oxford and previously practised as a City lawyer. During the pandemic, Ela decided to focus on her love of writing and began work on her debut novel, Jaded, that explores themes of consent, race, and identity.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
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On this week’s episode, I’m talking to the incredible Dana Dajani, Palestinian spoken word-artist, singer, actress and activist. We’re talking about the incredible power of storytelling and poetry in preserving history, connecting us to our ancestors, resistance and activism. I ask Dana about her Palestinian heritage, the life of her beloved grandmother and so much more. 

 Dana Dajani is an award-winning Palestinian writer, performer, and advocate. She lives and works between the Middle East, Europe, and the US.

Dana’s work as an actress, trainer, and consultant has taken her around the world- from performing at the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, to creating a Drama Therapy Program for children with Autism in the UAE, where she was honored as Emirates Woman “Artist of the Year”, and received the “Young Arab Award for Entertainment” among other recognitions.

Known for her original spoken word poetry, Dana’s background in theatre has informed and influenced writing, and allowed her to create a unique style of solo performance. Part spoken-word, part one-woman show, Dana uses gesture, character, and a simple scarf to transport audiences across various social justice themes through her characters.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
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This week on the podcast, I’m welcoming back my friend, the incredibly insightful and thoughtful, Dr. Sofia Rehman. Sofia now has a second book out in the world, called Gendering the Hadith: Recentering the Authority of Aisha, Mother of the Believers, which is her Phd thesis published as a book. On the show this week, we dig deep into understanding translations and interpretations, understanding Aisha bint Abu Bakr even better, what we can learn from Aisha and the Prophet (saw) about justice, hope and resilience, and so much more. 

Dr Sofia Rehman is an independent scholar specialising in Islam and Gender. She works as a knowledge building consultant for Musawah Movement, a global organisation committed to the reform of Muslim family law in line with gender egalitarian readings of Islam. As a PhD candidate she was a PG Impact Fellow at the Centre of Religion and Public Life and PRHS Scholar.

She is founder of the Islam and Gender read alongs in which she facilitates readings of academic texts penned by Muslim scholars in conversation with a global virtual audience and has recently been featured by Vogue Arabia, Refinery29 and The Independent. She is the author of a Treasury of Aisha bint Abu Bakr (Kube publishing) and, Gendering the Hadith: Recentering the Authority of Aisha, Mother of the Believers (Oxford University Press). She is a contributor to Mapping Faith: Theologies of Migration edited by Lia Shimada, Cut From the Same Cloth? Edited by Sabeena Akhtar, Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation (Tilted Axis), and Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature (404Ink). You can connect with her on her Instagram @Sofia_reading where she talks about all things related to books, faith and academia.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
Come connect with me on social media - I'd love to chat:

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Today’s episode was brought to you by Muslim Charity, a faith-based international charity, working around the world to tackle poverty, hunger and thirst. They deliver your Zakat and Sadaqah with honesty and transparency, reaching those in need with impactful projects, all year round. Muslim Charity provide vulnerable communities with life-saving healthcare, clean water, food, livelihood opportunities and education, helping everyone to thrive. 

If you’re looking for a charity you can trust, especially when it comes to your Zakat and Sadaqah, Muslim Charity is the one for you. Visit www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia to check out some of my favourite, impactful projects. 

www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia 

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On this week’s episode, I’m talking to Matthew Robinson, humanitarian filmmaker about his work and debut book, 104 In the Shade: Travels of a Humanitarian Filmmaker. I speak to Matthew about his experiences, what he’s learnt, and how we can do more to protect dignity and empowerment when it comes to marketing and social media in the humanitarian sector. 

 Founder of Migration Films, artist and film maker Matthew Robinson (Muhammad Abdul Mateen) has worked in the media industry for 25 years, as an editor on TV staples such as Strictly Come Dancing, Xtra Factor Rewind, The Only Way is Essex and Big Brother, SAS Who Dares Wins, and as a Director shooting short films for artists such as David Lachapelle and Dale vN Collins; music videos for Mark Owen of Take That and British rapper Roots Manuva; and editing movies ‘The Story Of’ and ‘White Collar Hooligan 2’. 

In the last 6 years Matthew has moved into production for the charity sector, where he has applied his skills to make a tangible difference to people’s lives, making videos and documentaries for various projects. Subjects include filming a cross-Europe aid convoy to Greece; refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey; open heart surgery on babies in Tanzania; water wells in Ethiopia and Bangladesh; food and water distributions in the desert in Somalia and Yemen; marathons in Morocco and Palestine and a rickshaw challenge in Pakistan. 

In 2020 he studied ‘Humanitarian Response to Conflict and Disaster’ at Harvard University and has since set up Migration Relief, a charity aimed at serving refugees and internally displaced people. 

‘104 IN THE SHADE: Travels Of A Humanitarian Film Maker’ is his debut book.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
Come connect with me on social media - I'd love to chat:

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Today’s episode was brought to you by Muslim Charity, a faith-based international charity, working around the world to tackle poverty, hunger and thirst. They deliver your Zakat and Sadaqah with honesty and transparency, reaching those in need with impactful projects, all year round. Muslim Charity provide vulnerable communities with life-saving healthcare, clean water, food, livelihood opportunities and education, helping everyone to thrive. 

If you’re looking for a charity you can trust, especially when it comes to your Zakat and Sadaqah, Muslim Charity is the one for you. Visit www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia to check out some of my favourite, impactful projects. 

www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia 

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I really hope this week’s episode helps you feel empowered, uplifted and inspired. Today, my guest is the powerhouse, Sarah Joseph, who has been working in media for decades. Sarah Joseph came to Islam at the age of just 16, having moved away from the Catholic church. She has been on a phenomenal journey with her faith, sharing with us all her experiences, insights and reflections about faith, loving God, doing good and about justice. Sarah has been someone I have looked up to for a very long time, and am always so grateful for her guidance, support and love, and I’m so glad she’s my guest today. 

On the show, we talk about what's happening in Palestine and around the world, slowing down in Ramadan, justice, peace, the future, the power of reading and so much more

Sarah Joseph is a globally renowned Muslim figure, respected for her innovative and independent thinking. She is a writer and broadcaster specialising in topics pertaining to faith, social change, environment, and education. She was listed as one of the World’s 500 most influential Muslims, one of Europe’s most influential leaders under 40, and has an OBE from the Queen. 

A graduate of King’s College London and University College London, Sarah is an internationally recognised public speaker. 

In 2003 Sarah founded emel - a brand which first created the concept and then detailed the progression of Muslim Lifestyle. The brand fundamentally changed the way Muslims were marketed to, and made Sarah an expert in contemporary Muslim consumers and ethics. 

Sarah has made countless media appearances including for the BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera. She has also appeared on the Doha Debates. Sarah has written for international newspapers including UK’s The Times and The Guardian, and scripted and recorded for a variety of BBC and independent radio productions. She has a regular slot on the BBC’s most listened to radio show, The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
Come connect with me on social media - I'd love to chat:

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Today’s episode was brought to you by Muslim Charity, a faith-based international charity, working around the world to tackle poverty, hunger and thirst. They deliver your Zakat and Sadaqah with honesty and transparency, reaching those in need with impactful projects, all year round. Muslim Charity provide vulnerable communities with life-saving healthcare, clean water, food, livelihood opportunities and education, helping everyone to thrive. 

If you’re looking for a charity you can trust, especially when it comes to your Zakat and Sadaqah, Muslim Charity is the one for you. Visit www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia to check out some of my favourite, impactful projects. 

www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia 

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We are now in the sacred month of Ramadan, where millions of Muslims around the world will be fasting – abstaining from food and drink, from dawn to dusk every day for 30 days. It is a time of heightened spirituality and worship, and so I think today’s guest is most fitting for the month ahead of us. 

On today's episode, I’m speaking to Aliyah Umm Raiyaan about her new book, the Power of Duaa. This book is a beautiful, poignant reminder about turning to God in all times – good and bad, ease and hardship, and improving our relationship with our creator and in turn, harnessing the profound power that dua, making supplication and asking of God, can have. 

Aliyah Umm Raiyaan reverted to Islam in 1999. Aliyah is the Sunday Times Bestselling author of Penguin published, 'Ramadan Reflections' and The Power of Du'a. She is also the Founder and CEO of Registered Charity Solace UK who support revert women in difficulty. Aliyah is the co-host of YouTube show Honest Tea Talk. Aliyah lives with her family in East London where she home educates her children.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
Come connect with me on social media - I'd love to chat:

www.instagram.com/readwithsamia
www.instagram.com/thediversebookshelfpod 


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Today’s episode was brought to you by Muslim Charity, a faith-based international charity, working around the world to tackle poverty, hunger and thirst. They deliver your Zakat and Sadaqah with honesty and transparency, reaching those in need with impactful projects, all year round. Muslim Charity provide vulnerable communities with life-saving healthcare, clean water, food, livelihood opportunities and education, helping everyone to thrive. 

If you’re looking for a charity you can trust, especially when it comes to your Zakat and Sadaqah, Muslim Charity is the one for you. Visit www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia to check out some of my favourite, impactful projects. 

www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia 

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On today’s show, I’m talking to Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan about her latest book, Seeing For Ourselves: And even stranger possibilities. Suhaiymah is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent and intro-spective people I know, and I absolutely love all the work she is doing and what she puts out into the world. Seeing For Ourselves feels quite different to Suhaiymah’s other books, and offers more personal reflections on identity, faith, belonging, grief, love and activism. In her book, Suhaiymah encourages us to move beyond the white western gaze, and focus on the only gaze that really matters: that of Allah. Its such a powerful little book, forcing us to rethink our values, ideas and intentions, and encouraging us to embrace our true authentic selves, away from the gazes upon us. 

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a writer, poet and educator disrupting understandings of history, race, knowledge and violence. She works to equip herself and others with the tools and faith to resist the unliveable conditions we find ourselves in, and work towards another reality.

Suhaiymah’s latest book, Seeing for Ourselves: And even stranger possibilities came out with Hajar Press in September 2023. Prior to this she authored Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia (Pluto Press, 2022) which was widely endorsed by the likes of Lowkey, Moazzam Begg, Fatima Manji, Lola Olufemi and more.

I really hope you enjoy this episode. It would mean so much if you could rate, like and subscribe, and if you could leave a review of the show. It really helps :)

Lets connect on social media:
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Today’s episode was brought to you by Muslim Charity, a faith-based international charity, working around the world to tackle poverty, hunger and thirst. They deliver your Zakat and Sadaqah with honesty and transparency, reaching those in need with impactful projects, all year round. Muslim Charity provide vulnerable communities with life-saving healthcare, clean water, food, livelihood opportunities and education, helping everyone to thrive. 

If you’re looking for a charity you can trust, especially when it comes to your Zakat and Sadaqah, Muslim Charity is the one for you. Visit www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia to check out some of my favourite, impactful projects. 

www.muslimcharity.org.uk/samia 

Support the show

This week's episode is a conversation with the wonderful and much loved, Sairish Hussain, about her latest novel, Hidden Fires. Sairish was one of the first guests on the show back in 2022, and so it is so lovely to be in conversation again, this time about her new novel. When debut novels are such a success, it can feel daunting to pick up an author’s second novel, wondering if it is just as amazing. But friends, I can confirm, Hidden Fires is incredible. It is the moving story of loss, grief and secrets buried deep within, and the beautiful, unlikely friendship between a grandfather and his teenage granddaughter. In her novel, Sairish writes about family, mental health, growing up, and the Partition of India. 

Sairish Hussain is a Bradford based author and Lecturer in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Family Tree, was published by HarperCollins and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Portico Prize and The Diverse Book Awards. It was also longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and winner of Calibre Audio's 'Hidden Gem' Prize. Sairish was selected by Kei Miller as one of ten ‘unmissable writers working in the UK’ for the International Literature Showcase 2021. She was one of the finalists in the Women’s Prize & Good Housekeeping Futures Award, an initiative which celebrates the most promising emerging female authors today. Hidden Fires is her second novel. 

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I loved speaking to Sairish.

Please do like, subscribe and follow on your podcast platform of choice. It would mean so much if you would rate and leave a review.

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On the show this week, I’m talking to Nadeine Asabali about her book, Veiled Threat: On being visibly Muslim in Britain. 

In her book, Nadeine addresses the myriad of experiences of Muslim hijabi women, and the many different facets of racism, Islamaphobia and mysogigny experienced. Being a mixed raced child, with a Libyan father and a white English mother, Nadeine often passed as a white kid, until she started wearing the hijab and everything changed. In this episode, we talk all about her book, Islamaphobia, the pitfalls of white liberal feminism, the criminalisation of Muslim identity in Britain and so much more. 

Nadeine Asbali is a British Muslim writer and secondary school teacher living in east London. Growing up with an English mother and a Libyan father in an overwhelmingly white town and deciding to wear the hijab as a teenager are experiences that have shaped the trajectory of her life and her writing, forming the foundations of a freelance writing career that explores the themes of identity, social policy, racism and Islamophobia for national and international publications, including the i, The Guardian, theNew Arab and Glamour. Nadeine is also a Metro columnist and regularly writes about schools and education policy, specialising in how Muslim and ethnic minority pupils are represented by the British education system. 

I hope you find this episode insightful, interesting and enlightening. Please do follow and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. I'd really appreciate it if you would rate and leave a review, as it helps more people find out about the show :)

Also, you can now help support the show by joining me on Patreon. When you subscribe, you could get access to an exclusive episode right to your inbox, each month!

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On the show this week, I'm talking to researcher, brain health trainer and parent coach, Taiba Bajar about her book, Unlock Autism. Taiba has developed a unique seven-step action plan to helping unlock a child's potential within 12 months. Taiba's son is autistic, and upon receiving his diagnosis, she went on a mission to do everything in her power to help her son, manage his autism and help him to thrive. In this episode, we talk about the treatment of autism in the NHS, rewiring the brain, South Asian experiences and so much more. 

Taiba Bajar is an award-winning researcher and licensed brain health trainer. With a seasoned background as a corporate professional and parent coach, she holds two science degrees from the University of Bristol with a background in neuroscience. 

Taiba founded Autism Brain Empowerment, a successful parent coaching business following her journey as a parent to her autistic son. Drawing from her professional expertise and personal experiences, Taiba equips parents to guide their children in reducing autism symptoms, unlocking their potential, and fostering their leadership in the world.

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For this week's podcast episode, I'm speaking to Rowan Hisayo Buchanan about her latest novel, The Sleep Watcher.

We talk about what sleep-watching is, and what we would really discover if we could secretly see the world while asleep. We also talk about mental health, family dynamics, mixed-race identity, writing, and so much more.

This episode was recorded back in September :)

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a Japanese-British-Chinese-American writer. Her debut novel, Harmless Like You was published in 2016 by Sceptre and won the Author’s Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask award. It was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Books Are My Bag Breakthrough Author Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan was the recipient of a Margins fellowship for the Asian American Writers Workshop, has a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is currently working on a PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her writing has appeared in the short story anthology How Much the Heart Can Hold (Sceptre), the Guardian, New York Times, Granta, The Paris Review and The Atlantic among other places. She has lived in London, New York, Tokyo, Madison and Norwich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do rate, like, follow, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps :)

Also, you can help me continue putting out great episodes like these by joining me on Patreon. Join my community today and you could receive an exclusive podcast episode right to your inbox, every month:

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In this week's episode, I’m speaking to Aamina Ahmad, about her novel, The Return of Faraz Ali, which I found so moving, multi-layered and immersive, taking us into the heart of the red-light district of Lahore. We follow Faraz Ali, from when he is removed from his courtesan mother as just 5 years old, and as he grows up with a longing to understand who he is and where he comes from. The story involves a detective crime plot, and spans multiple timelines including the second world war, and the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence. I really enjoyed it, and I’m so pleased to be speaking to Aamina today. 

Aamina Ahmad is a British fiction writer and playwright based in the U.S. She has two book publications, the play The Dishonoured and the novel The Return of Faraz Ali, which was named a "new work to read" by The New York Times, "quietly stunning" by The New York Times Book Review, and a "most anticipated" book by both The Millions and Book Culture. She is a creative writing professor at the University of Minnesota and the winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award.

This episode was recorded back in September 2023.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review, and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. Also, come connect with me on social media:

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You can now support the podcast, and help me put out great conversations like these.

Join my community on Patreon, and when you subscribe you could get access to an exclusive, bonus episode every month:

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My guest on the show this week, is Sim Kern, an author whose work I came across only recently. Alongside being a published author, Sim is a content creator, using Instagram and Tik Tok as key tools in her activist life, making videos that inform, educate and empower. Sim is an anti-zionist Jew, dedicating huge amounts of time to the Palestinian liberation movement, while dismantling Israeli propaganda and narratives about the Zionist colonial project.

At the time of recording, the genocidal war on Gaza has been taking place for almost 4 months, with over 30,000 people in Gaza having been killed. Over a million people have been displaced from their homes and are starving, living without clean water, shelter, healthcare, and have nowhere safe to go. 

Sim Kern is a Gulf Coast author and environmental journalist writing about climate change, queer identity, and social justice. Their debut horror novella, Depart, Depart!, was selected for the Honor List for the 2020 Otherwise Award. Their short story collection, Real Sugar is Hard to Find, was hailed in a starred review by Publishers Weekly as, “a searing, urgent, but still achingly tender work that will wow any reader of speculative fiction.” As a journalist, they report on petrochemical polluters and drag space billionaires. Sim’s latest novel is called The Free People's Village, set in an alternative reality of 2020, where a war on climate change has been announced. 

You can find Sim on social media here:
www.instagram.com/sim_bookstagrams_badly
https://www.tiktok.com/@simkern

If you enjoyed this episode, please do let me know! I'd love it if you could follow, subscribe and leave a review. Come find me on social media :)

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Also, if you'd like to support the podcast, you can now join my community on Patreon. When you subscribe, you could get access to a special exclusive episode directly to your inbox every month!

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On the show this week, I'm speaking to Sheela Banerjee about her book, What's In a Name.

Our names are possibly one of the most important pillars of our identities. Often given to us by somebody else, usually parents or a family member, they usually mean something. For many of us, our names reflect a tie to our heritage, our faith, and our history. What is even more interesting, is how our names interact with the world we currently find ourselves living in. This week, I’m speaking to Sheela Banerjee about her book, What’s In A Name, where she explores all these things and more. It’s fascinating. 

Sheela Banerjee is a journalist and academic and worked for many years at the BBC and Channel 4, directing programmes which told powerful stories of individual lives. She has also worked as a radio reporter and BBC producer on current affairs and political programmes. She left TV to undertake a PhD on Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. What’s in a Name? is her first book.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, and I'd love to hear from you. Following, subscribing, rating and leaving a review really means SO much. 

You can now support the show and help me keep putting out great and important episodes like these. Join my community on Patreon, and when you subscribe, you'll get access to an exclusive bonus episode each month, straight to your inbox.

Come find me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/thediversebookshelfpodcast

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On the show this week, I'm speaking to journalist and author, Azad Essa about his latest book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel. At the time of recording this episode, the genocide in Gaza has been going on for over 90 days, with over 30,000 people having been killed, and 1.9 million people forcibly displaced from their homes.  The population of Gaza is being starved amid relentless bombardments targeting journlists, authors, institutes, hospitals and schools. Right now, more than ever, it it important for us to take a deeper look at the world around us. 

In his latest book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel, Azad Essa brings to the fore the important relationship between the two countries, discussing the occupations of Kashmir and Palestine, as well as the attacks in India on Muslim and minority communities. He encourages us to not turn away from this critical relationship, expanding our understanding of major players within the political arena. This is more important than ever now, as at the time of recording, Israel’s attacks and genocide in Gaza relentlessly continue. Over 22,000 people have been reported dead, and with thousands trapped under rubble, the real figure is likely to be much higher.  

Azad Essa is a senior reporter for Middle East Eye based between Johannesburg and New York City. 

Azad previously worked for Al Jazeera English between 2010-2018 in which he was part of a team that won numerous awards for our breaking news and in depth coverage of the Arab Spring. Azad has reported from across the African continent, as well as South Asia, covering politics, development and poverty.

His four-part investigation into the shocking behavior of peacekeepers in war zones, titled: Why do some peacekeepers rape? won the 2017 UN Correspondents Association International Prize (Silver) for coverage on UN activities.

Azad has also written for The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, among others.

Just a reminder, that you can now support the show. Join my community on Patreon, and get access to an exclusive bonus episode every month :)

Join here: www.patreon.com/thediversebookshelfpodcast 

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This week's podcast episode is a super interesting conversation with Celina Baljeet Basra. In Celina’s debut novel, Happy, she introduces us to the protagonist of the same name – Happy. Coming from a farming family in Punjab, we follow him as he makes a huge decision to leave his family home in India and to travel to Europe for work. Celina provides us with a witty and nuanced look into the food industry in Europe, as well as the experience of labour migrants and their families. She raises vital questions around human dignity, human rights, the pursuit for happiness and success in life, and whether we are asking the right questions with regards to living ethically. Happy is written in a non-traditional format, making the reading experience so much more interesting and nuanced.

Celina is a writer and curator based in Berlin. She graduated from the Free University of Berlin, where she studied Art History in a Global Context, and has since worked with Berlin Biennale, Galerie im Turm, and other institutions at the local and international level. She has a range of residencies under her belt and she was awarded both curatorial and literary research scholarships from the Berlin Senate. She is a founder of The Department of Love, a curatorial collective.

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This week's guest on the show is the hugely talented Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian, and most recently, Enter Ghost. I love Isabella’s work, which is always so thoughtful, beautifully written, multi-layered and hugely informative and insightful. As a British Palestinian, Isabella tells stories of Palestinian families, enabling us to understand better, Palestinian history, Colonial projects, and what we are witnessing unfold in Palestine right now.

At the time of recording this episode, towards the end of 2023, the most recent war on Gaza has been taking place for over 75 days, and the official death toll has crossed 20,000 people. Thousands are still trapped under rubble, and millions are also at risk from starvation, disease and the cold. 

I’m so glad to be talking about Palestine, and Isabella’s work today. 

Isabella Hammad was born in London. Her writing has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, The New York Times and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a 2019 O. Henry Prize. Her first novel The Parisian (2019) won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and has received literary fellowships from MacDowell and the Lannan Foundation. She is currently a fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.

As always, I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Come connect with me on social media:

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This week, I bring you a special end of year episode! My husband, Malik Wasim, took to the interviewer's seat, and hosted a Q&A, asking me all about the show, books and bookstagram. I put a post out on Instagram asking friends and followers for their questions, so I hope this episode is fun and helpful :)

2023 has been a great year for the show. I moved to weekly episodes this year, and have had so many incredible, powerful and moving conversations. I'm so proud of, and grateful for this space, where we're holding important conversations, talking about things that really matter and sharing our stories.

Please continue listening to the show in 2024, where I hope to be giving much more of the same, interviewing inspiring guests and talking all about books.

As always, I'd love to hear from you. Please do subscribe to The Diverse Bookshelf on your podcast platform of choice, and connect with me on social media:
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On the show this week, I’m speaking to Assia Belgacem  a French-Algerian writer and book critic based in Bordeaux, France. Assia runs the Instagram account, @shereadsox, where she writes nuanced book reviews and gives excellent book recommendations. In this episode, we talk about Assia’s identity: Algerian and French, and also about being Muslim in an increasingly right-wing, France. With hijab bans in place in the country, Assia works as a teacher in a government school, where she is unable to cover her hair. We talk about so much, including French and Algerian history, political activism, books and so much more.

At the time of recording, It has been almost 70 days since the beginning of Israel’s most recent war on Gaza, where so far over 20,000 people have been killed. Thousands are still trapped under rubble, and shortages of food and water are becoming lethal. Naturally, we talked about Palestine today, too. 

Assia's work focuses on decolonization, French politics and African/Swana literature.

Follow Assia on instagram:
www.instagram.com/shereadsox

As always, I hope this episode is interesting and enjoyable! Connect with me on social media, as I'd love to hear from you.

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At the time of recording this episode, we are on day 62 of Israel’s most recent war on Gaza. The situation is beyond horrific, as over 20,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed and 1.7 million have been displaced from their homes. Numerous international humanitarian laws have been broken as civialian areas, hospitals and schools have been attacked, and white phospherous has been used on civilian populations, with catastrophic impacts. 

On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Rashid Khalidi, author and historian about understanding the last 100 years, in an attempt to truly understand and uncover what is happening today.  We talk about the Balfour declaration of 1917, the end of British colonial rule in Palestine, the growth of the Israeli colonial project, the ways in which Palestinians have resisted, and so much more. 

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1970 and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago. He is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and has served as President of the Middle East Studies Association. He has written or co-edited ten books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance, which we’ll be speaking about today. He has written over a hundred scholarly articles on aspects of Middle East history and politics, as well as opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune Vanguardia, The London Review of Books, and The Nation. Rashid Khalidi lived in Beirut, and was deeply engaged in Lebanese politics in the 70s, and during the Lebanese war of 1982. He has played an active role in peace talks and negotiations in the region in the 80s and 90s.

Buy The Hundred Years' War on Palestine here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-a-history-of-settler-colonial-conquest-and-resistance-rashid-i-khalidi/2901891?ean=9781781259344

If you enjoyed this episode, please do reach out and let me know! It would mean the world if you could rate, follow and subscribe, as well as leaving a review, as it helps more people discover the show.

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On this week’s episode, I’m speaking to Saima Mir, journalist and crime novelist, author of The Khan, and its sequel, Vengeance.

In her books, Saima introduces us to Jia Khan. A successful lawyer, her London life is a long way from the grubby Northern streets she knew as a child, where her father headed up the Pakistani community and ran the local organised crime syndicate. Often his Jirga rule - the old way - was violent and bloody, but it was always justice of a kind.

In her books, Saima explores morality, humanity, family, kinship, community, patriarchy and the unfair expectations placed on women. She explores what people are forced to do to survive, and the grey lines between right and wrong.

Saima Mir is an award-winning journalist and writer. She has written for The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, and worked for the BBC.

Her work appeared in the anthology, It’s Not About the Burqa in 2019, and The Best Most Awful Job in 2020. Her novel The Khan is being published by Point Blank and is due on in January 2021. The Khan has been optioned by BBC Studios.

Saima is a recipient of The Commonwealth Broadcast Association World View Award, and The K Blundell Trust Award. Saima’s work has been longlisted for The SI Leeds Literary Prize, and The Bath Novel Award.

Her screenplay Ruby & Matt has been optioned by Rendition Films

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I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do think about leaving a review, and like, subscribe and rate wherever you listen to this show :)
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On today’s show, I’m joined once again by super talented writer, Etaf Rum. Etaf has written 2 powerful novels, A Woman is No Man, and most recently, Evil Eye. Her work is an intricate look into the lives of immigrant Palestinian families, dealing with serious themes of inter-generational trauma, identity, mental health, belonging, family, motherhood and so much more.  

As we recorded today’s episode, Israel has been relentlessly attacking Gaza, Palestine for over 50 days. 20,000 people have been killed, including 8,000 children and 1.7 million people have been displaced from their homes.  There is an increase in the spread of disease, and people are struggling to find enough food to eat or clean water to drink. With ruthless attacks on hospitals, the healthcare system has collapsed, and premature babies and Palestinian men, women and children are dying without adequate healthcare. Etaf Rum, a Palestinian-American woman herself has been vocally supporting the Palestinian cause and demands for an urgent and permanent ceasefire, but has come under fire by some of her readers, raising huge questions around whether or not readers are truly understanding the stories Etaf is telling around Palesine, the Nakba of 1948, inter-generational trauma and occupation.

On the show this week, Etaf talks about what she has experienced in her own life and in the reader community since October 7th. We talk about literary empathy, performative reading, inter-generational trauma, understanding mainstream narratives about Israel and Zionism and why these are harmful, and how the liberation of us all are inter-linked.

I'm grateful to Etaf for joining me on the show again today, and I hope you take something meaningful away from this conversation.

I'd really appreciate it if you could rate, follow, subscribe and like, as it really helps more people discover my show. Come connect with me on social media - I'd love to hear from you.

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TW: mentions of miscarriage, infertility and grief.

This episode was recorded in late October.

I’m so pleased to be joined by Huma Qureshi on the show this week, talking about her work and her first novel and latest book, Playing Games. Playing Games tells the story of two sisters, Hana and Mira, who like most sisters, love each other deeply but have a relationship that is flawed and complex. Mira, an inspiring playwright, overhears a very private and personal conversation her sister is having with her husband. Mira finds her sister’s words so powerful, they set off the cogs of writers inspiration in her mind, and she writes the scene of a play exploring marriage for a modern-day couple. Huma poses questions about using real life for fiction, and where the boundaries and lines are. Is it ever okay to write about someone else’s life, and what happens if that someone else is your sister? Hana herself is going through a tumultuous time in her marriage, as she experiences loss and deep longing for motherhood.

Huma Qureshi is the award-winning author of four books, including How We Met: A Memoir Of Love and Other Misadventures and the short story collection, Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love, both published to critical acclaim in 2021. In 2022, How We Met was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Non-Fiction award, and Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love was long listed for both The Jhalak Prize and The Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her first book, In Spite of Oceans, received The John C Laurence Award. In 2020, Huma won the Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize, with her story The Jam Maker. Her novel, Playing Games, will be published in November 2023. Huma writes the popular newsletter Dear Huma and teaches a variety of creative writing courses via her website, www.humaqureshi.co.uk

I really hope you love this episode, and as always I'd love to hear from you. 

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On this week’s show, I’m speaking to Palestinian-American writer, Sahar Mustafah about identity, writing, survivor’s guilt, and the current war on Gaza which has led to the killing of over 14,000 Palestinian men, women and children. Her book, The Beauty of Your Face is a stunning family tale of a young woman finding herself and her faith, as she explores her own identity. 

The daughter of immigrants, Sahar Mustafah explores her Palestinian heritage in her writing. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Columbia College where she was a Follett Graduate Scholar. Mustafah is a Willow Books Grand Prize Winner for Code of The West, was named one of the 25 Writers to Watch by The Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and is a member of Voices Protest and Radius of Arab American Writers. Her debut novel, The Beauty of Your Face, was named a The New York Times Book Review Notable Books of 2020 and a Finalist for the 2021 Palestine Book Award. It was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Award and chosen for Los Angeles Times “United We Read.” Mustafah writes and teaches outside of Chicago.

The Beauty of Your Face tells a uniquely American story in powerful, evocative prose. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter--radicalized by the online alt-right--attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories, and into a profound and "moving" (Bustle) exploration of one woman's life in a nation at odds with its ideals.

Buy The Beauty of Your Face, here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-beauty-of-your-face-shortlisted-for-the-palestine-book-award-2021-sahar-mustafah/1261005?ean=9781789559736

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On this week's show, I'm speaking to Dina Nayeri about the truth. In a growing age of false news, propoganda, smear campaigns and cancel culture, the sanctity of the truth and who gets believed is increasingly important. There is a difference between those who speak the truth, and those whose truth is believed, as sometimes it is the case that those who speak their truth are not believed, and the consequences are dire. We have seen this play out worldwide for centuries for women, refugees, people of colour and black people, among other minority and vulnerable groups especially. 

On this week's show, we unpack why some people are more believable than others, the role of the media, and the state's eagerness to push out certain narratives, even if they are not true. This has especially been the case recently since the increased attacks on Gaza, where news outlets have recalled harmful and incorrect statements.

Dina Nayeri is the author of two novels and two books of creative nonfiction, Who Gets Believed? (2023) and The Ungrateful Refugee (2019), winner of the Geschwister Scholl Preis and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices, and called by The Guardian “a work of astonishing, insistent importance.” Her essay of the same name was one of The Guardian’s most widely read long reads in 2017, and is taught in schools and anthologized around the world. A 2019-2020 Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, and winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, Dina has won a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, the O. Henry Prize, and Best American Short Stories, among other honors. Her work has been published in 20+ countries and in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Granta, and many other publications.  Her short dramas have been produced by the English Touring Theatre and The Old Vic in London.  She is a graduate of Princeton, Harvard, and the Iowa Writers Workshop.  In autumn 2021, she was a Fellow at the American Library in Paris. She is currently working on plays, screenplays, and her upcoming publications include The Waiting Place, a nonfiction children’s book about refugee camp, Who Gets Believed, a creative nonfiction book, and Sitting Bird, a novel. She has recently joined the faculty at the University of St. Andrews. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider rating and leaving a review. Also, connect with me on social media - I'd love to hear from you!

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This week on the show, I’m joined by two book-lovers, book bloggers and activists to talk about some really important issues: Ola Abou and Ilham Essalih.  We're talking about what books we should read to further understand the war on Gaza, and the war in Syria, and how the movements for liberation in Palestine and Syria are intertwined. 

At the time of recording (16th October), we were on day 9 of Israel’s war against Gaza, with the official death toll having reached nearly 3,000, 700 of whom are children and babies. For 9 days, the besieged Gaza strip has faced relentless attacks and a total land, sea and air blockade, cutting off its supplies of water, food and fuel to 2.3 million people. The situation is beyond horrendous, as hospitals struggle to cope with the injured amid a lack of medical supplies and doctors, and communities are being ordered to leave their homes due to imminent attacks. Even while leaving, passages that were previously declared as safe, have been attacked, sparing no one. There are also increasing reports on attacks in the occupied West Bank, and arrests of over 70 people. 

 The death toll has now exceeded well over 4,000 people, and schools and hospitals have been ruthlessly attacked. 

Unfortunately, Palestine is not the only place impacted by Israel at the moment. Israel has been bombing Syria, which since 2011, has been in a devastating state of war and crisis. Twelve years after protesters in Syria first demonstrated and rose up against the four-decade rule of the Assad family, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and nearly thirteen million people—more than half the country’s prewar population—have been displaced. Amid war, the Syrian people are suffering an economic crisis, and a massive earthquake at the start of 2023 cast much of the population in the north into further despair.

Follow Ola and Ilham on social media:

Ola: www.instagram.com/slowreadingola 
Ilham: www.instagram.com/ilhamreads

Books mentioned in this episode:

Palestine:
Classics

• Ghassan Kanafani: Men in the Sun, Palestine’s Children 
• Emile Habiby: The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist 
• Halim Barakat: Days of Dust (was meant to mention this book but I forgot but it’s really good!)
• Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish

Non-fiction/memoirs: 

Palestine writers:

• Edward Said: The Question of Palestine + his memoir Out of Place 
• Mourid Barghouti: I Saw Ramallah 
• Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (history)

Jewish writers:

• Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine + Ten Myths About Israel 
• Avi Shlaim: Three Worlds 
• Massoud Hayoun: When We Were Arabs (forgot to mention this, it’s another memoir about Jews from Arab lands, really essential for understanding Zionism)

Contemporary:

• Isabella Hammad: The Parisian
• Adania Shibli: Minor Detail 
• Ahlam Bsharat: Trees of the Absentees + Code Name: Butterfly 
• Mohammed El-Kurd: Rifqa (poetry) 

Syria:

-In Praise of Hatred, Khaled Khalifa
-What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad
-The Middle East Crisis Factory, Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash
-We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, Wendy Pearlman
-Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami
-You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, Alaa Abd El-Fattah
-The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh
-The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui

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On today’s show, I’m speaking with powerful story-teller and writer, Etaf Rum. Etaf has written two powerful novels, A Woman is No Man, and most recently, Evil Eye. Her work is an intricate look into the lives of immigrant Palestinian families, dealing with serious themes of inter-generational trauma, identity, mental health, belonging, family, motherhood and so much more. Her work has connected with readers all over the world, evoking deep emotion, and shedding light on the traumas held and lived with every single day, of one of the world’s most persecuted communities – Palestine. I’m so glad she’s my guest today. 

 We talk about the importance of Palestinian stories, intergenerational trauma, mental health, healing, identity, and so much more.

While this conversation is not in light of recent escalations of violence in Palestine, I hope it helps inform and educate, giving insight into the lived reality of Palestinian families.

The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a Masters of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Composition and teaches undergraduate courses in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and would love to hear from you.

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On today’s show, I’m speaking with journalist and historian, Lucy Fulford about her non-fiction book, The Exiled. 

In The Exiled, Lucy delves into understanding the Asian expulsion from Uganda in 1972, which saw 80,000 South Asian Ugandans being given just 90 days to leave the country, by the dictator, Idi Amin. She goes way back, uncovering how the British empire led to so many South Asians finding home in Uganda, but how it also impacted the structure of Ugandan society and the impact on black Ugandans. The book is a mixture of Lucy’s own family history, interviews she has undertaken, and copious amounts of research. The book takes us from pre-1972 Uganda, to the expulsion itself and beyond 1972, as countless families in the UK and elsewhere strived to build a new life. This is a really thorough and nuanced exploration of that part of history, also sprinkled with Lucy’s own musings on race, identity. 

Lucy is an experienced multimedia journalist and filmmaker whose work centres on migration, conflict and climate.

After graduating from the University of Bristol with a first-class honours degree in History – writing a dissertation on the Rwandan genocide – she studied media law, shorthand and reporting with the NCTJ and worked as a senior reporter and acting editor of a press agency, covering breaking news, crime and courts for the national press in London. Growing up between cultures has led to an interest in exploring identity and in her book, The exiled, she explores the generational legacy of forced migration, inspired in part by her family history.

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On this week's show, I’m speaking with Kevin Jared Hosein about his novel, Hungry Ghosts. Hungry Ghosts is a remarkable novel set in the 1940s in Trinidad, following the story of two families, vastly different from one another, but whose decisions and actions have devastating consequences. In his book, Kevin explores so much, from race, class, religion, wealth and human dignity, to huge questions around one’s pursuit of escaping the life they don’t want to lead; whether we are the saviours in our own stories, and how the actions of one person or group of people, can have long-lasting impacts on others, spanning generations.

On the show we talk about morally ambiguous characters, learning about stories through gaming, colonialism, class, race and so much more.

Kevin Jared Hosein is a teacher and writer from Trinidad, where he lives and works. He won the Commonwealth writers’ prize in 2018 for his story Passage and he has written two novels for young adults, The Repenters and The Beast of Kukuyo. His first novel for adults, Hungry Ghosts, is set in 1940s Trinidad and concerns the wife of an overseer who goes missing and the attempts by one of his employees to move up in a highly stratified society.

I'd really love to connect with you, and would love to hear your thoughts on the show. Come find me on social media:

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On the show this week, I spoke with the super creative and wonderful, Laila Woozeer about her memoir, Not Quite White. Born to a Mauritian father and white mother, Laila often felt like she didn't belong and struggled to see herself represented in the world at large. In her memoir, she details the complexity of mixed racial identities, how difficult it can often be to navigate all the ways we are often othered, and the importance of learning to accept ourselves and all the different parts of our identity.

In this conversation, we talk about creativity, expressions of self, racism, growing up feeling like an outsider, mental health, intergenerational trauma and so much more.

Laila Woozeer is a British author, performer, musician, and activist. Woozeer's 2022 book, Not Quite White is a memoir described as "primarily focused on mixed-race identity and also looking at representation, structural racism, intergenerational trauma and interracial family relations." 

I hope you find some healing, community and hope through this conversation.

As always, I'd love to hear from you. Please do connect with me on social media:

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On today’s show, I’m speaking with Jaspreet Kaur, a woman I really look up to. We talk all about being a brown girl, and the challeges we face, journeys we go on, and all the beauty that lies within it all. Jaspreet’s book takes an inter-generational look at what it really means to be a brown woman, and what issues we really need to talk more about. On this episode, we talk about microaggressions and how harmful they are, the importance of our names and saying them correctly, body image issues, body hair, periods, fertility, being vulnerable, healing and so much more. 

Jaspreet Kaur, also known by her online handle 'Behind the Netra' is an award-winning spoken word artist, history teacher and writer from London. She is the author of Brown Girl Like Me. She is passionate about gender issues, taboo subjects and encouraging positive social change in both the Asian community and wider society. Her work tackles issues related to gender discrimination, mental health stigma, the postcolonial immigrant experience, and more. Jaspreet is a regular on the BBC and Sunday Morning Live and worked with the UN on the HeforShe campaign. She is currently a Research Fellow at Birkbeck University's Centre for British Political Life. She is a force to be reckoned with, and I’m so glad she's with us on the show today.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Please do get in touch with me on social media to keep the conversation going :)

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On this week’s episode, I’m speaking to Susan Muaddi Darraj about her new novel, behind you is the sea, s set in Baltimore and follows the stories of a Palestinian American immigrant community. It is a tender, sweeping novel of a family grappling with so much – loss of identity, struggling to exist in a country that is so hostile towards them, strained family dynamics, love, difficult marriages, parent-child relationships and so much more. Behind you is the sea is a story of a Palestinian Christian community, and Palestinian Christians face huge erasure and genocide as the war on Gaza continues well into its seventh month. 

Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow.

Susan Muaddi Darraj’s short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home, was named the winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, judged by Jaime Manrique.   It also won the 2016 Arab American Book Award, a 2016 American Book Award, and was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press. For children, she has written numerous YA biographies, as well as the Farah Rocks chapter book series, the first to feature an Arab American protagonist. 

Her new novel, Behind You Is the Sea . The book was published in the USA in January 2024, and will be releasing in the UK in early June. 

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This week's episode is a little different. Usually I interview a super-inspiring author, and we dig deep into the themes and issues they explore in their writing. But this week, there is no guest, and it's just me. I wanted to take some time to reflect on the past year, and all the wonderful conversations that have taken place on the show.

The Diverse Bookshelf podcast is now one year old :) With over 40 episodes out in the world, I wanted to sit back and think about the space we've created, what my intention and drive really was, what sort of conversations have taken place, and where we go from here.

I hope you enjoy this slightly different episode, and we'll be back with inspiring interviews soon!

I love to connect with listeners, and LOVE to hear what you think of the show. Connect with me on social media here:

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On this week's episode, I chat to the wonderful Faiza Shaheen, author of Know Your Place, which is part-memoir, and part-research-based analysis about class in the UK. In the book, Faiza discusses her own working-class background, and the effects of austerity on her family, especially her mother who was relying on benefits due to her health. She breaks down the very many things in society which helped her to graduate from the University of Oxford, including a state-school system with good teachers, a welfare state system, and free universal healthcare. But she also breaks down how a person from a working class background has to work up to 4,000 times harder to succeed, due to the structure of our system. 

We explore some big questions about social justice, social mobility and equality and fairness in the UK, talking about Faiza's political career, research and insights. We break down what we really mean by social mobility, and what really matters when it comes to representation in government. 

Dr. Faiza Shaheen is an economist, writer, and commentator. She is the author of a range of materials and publications covering the most salient social and economic debates of our times, including inequality, austerity, immigration, youth unemployment and social mobility. Faiza has over 15 years of experience researching the trends and consequences of inequality, as well as designing policies and campaigns to address the causes of inequality and exclusion.

In 2017, Faiza was named the Observer Rising Star for Campaigning, nominated as Asian Woman of the Year and included in the Top 100 Influencers on the Left list in the UK.

As always, I'd love to hear what you think of this conversation! Please do follow, rate and review as it helps more people find the show.

I'd also love to connect with you on social media:

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For the first time on the show, I'm welcoming back an author I interviewed last year - Christy Lefteri! I am a huge fan of Christy's work, so could not be more thrilled. Christy writes about important social, political and global issues including the refugee crisis, the war in Syria, domestic labour, family, loss, identity and belonging. With her new novel,  The Book of Fire, she explores the effects of climate change, human greed, and what  could happen to the world if thing carry on going the way they are.

In this conversation, we talk about family, grief, healing, leaning into joy, the environment, finding hope and so much more.

Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. She holds a PhD in creative writing from Brunel University, where she was a lecturer for many years. She is the author of Songbirds and the international bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which won the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. 

The Book of Fire is Christy Lefteri's latest novel, published by Bonnier Books / Zaffre. It will be released on 17th August, and you can get your copy here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5890/9781786581563

As always, I'd love to hear from you! Let me know what you think by connecting with me on social media.

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On this week's episode, I spoke to the super stylish, absolutely wonderful, and very insightful, Hafsa Lodi about her book, Modesty: A Fashion Paradox.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about fashion, or what it means to be fashionable.  I'm typically seen wearing clashing colours, outfits just thrown together and odd socks. :) However, I am really intrigued by the way the modest fashion industry around the world, and especially in the UK, has grown over the last 10 years. I'm particularly interested in whether something so inward and holding moral weight, 'modesty', can go hand-in-hand with something that it concerned with outward appearance, 'fashion'. Hafsa explores this question and more in her book, and we talk about SO many things in this episode. 

Modesty: A Fashion Paradox is published by Neem Tree Books. 

Hafsa Lodi is an American journalist who has been covering fashion in the Middle East for the past decade. She was born in New York City, and at the age of 14 relocated to the United Arab Emirates with her family, where she attended Dubai American Academy while interning after school with one of the region’s leading publishing houses, ITP.

After completing her undergraduate studies at the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto, Hafsa moved to London for a year, where she earned her master’s degree in Islamic Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies. The relationships between religion, culture and modernity have always fascinated Hafsa, who covered topics like honour killings in Canada’s South Asian communities, the use of DNA evidence in rape cases in Pakistan and the industrialization of the Holy city of Makkah, before turning to the fashion journalism beat. While living in Dubai, Hafsa has written for The National newspaper, Luxury Magazine, Mojeh Magazine, Velvet Magazine, Savoir Flair and Vogue India, in addition to working as an online fashion editor for one of the Middle East’s largest luxury retailers, Boutique 1. She is a freelance stylist, and also has a part-time clothing line, creating whimsical maxi-cardigans and kaftans during Ramadan, and statement hand-embellished sweatshirts for the winter seasons.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please do consider following, rating and reviewing as it really helps more people find the show. Also, do connect with me on social media. I'd love to hear from you :)

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TW: sexual assault, domestic violence and grief.

Have you ever read a book where you feel immense rage towards a character? So much so, you're beyond glad that this is a piece of fiction. Well, that was my experience of reading The Middle Child by Chika Unigwe.

In The Middle Child, we meet Nani, who after some devastating loss, ends up trapped in an abusive marriage. On this episode, I spoke to Chika Unigwe about what stories she wanted to explore, rage at characters, systems of oppression, patriarchy, grief and so much more.

Born in Enugu, Nigeria, she is the author of four novels, including On Black Sisters Street and Night Dancer. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Guernica, Aeon and many other journals.

Her works have been translated into several languages. A recipient of several awards and fellowships, she lives and works in the USA. The Middle Child is her latest novel, published by Canongate Books in 2023. 

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For this week's episode, I spoke to the super intelligent, and absolutely wonderful, Parini Shroff. Parini Shroff is author of the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction long-listed novel, The Bandit Queens - a book which The New York Times has called “a radically feel-good story about the murder of no-good husbands by a cast of unsinkable women.”

I loved The Bandit Queens, which is full of dark humour and wit, unforgettable characters, a fast plot and it tackles so many important themes and issues such as patriarchy, caste, class, race, domestic abuse and so much more. On this episode, we go behind the scenes of the book, as Parini talks about her inspiration and writing process. We talk about justice, revenge, female rage, and so much more.

Parini Shroff received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied under Elizabeth McCracken, Alexander Chee, and Cristina García. She is a practicing attorney and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bandit Queens is her debut novel.

I hope you love this episode as much as I enjoyed speaking to Parini :)

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On this week's podcast episode, I spoke to the hilarious Huda Fahmy, illustrator and writer. In this laughter-packed episode, we talked about why humour is so important, the universality of everyday life experiences, family, creating characters, creativity and so much more.

Huda's latest book in her Huda F series, Huda F Cares is coming out in October 2023, so get pre-ordering from a bookshop you love!

Huda Fahmy grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, and has loved comics since she was a kid. She attended the University of Michigan where she majored in English. She taught English to middle and high schoolers for eight years before she started writing about her experiences as a visibly Muslim woman in America and was encouraged by her older sister to turn these stories into comics. Huda, her husband Gehad, and their son reside in Houston, Texas.

You can pre-order Huda F Cares from Bookshop.org, here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5890/9780593532805 

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On this week's show I spoke to the lovely and hugely talented Hiba, who is also a dear friend of mine. On 6th July, Hiba's first children's novel, Safiyyah's War, hit bookshelves in the UK, and in this episode we talk about the beautiful book. 

Hiba's book is about a part of history that we know so little about - the resistance movement against the Holocaust that was run from the Grand Mosque of Paris. In the book, our protagonist, 11-year-old Safiyyah ends up in the middle of the movement, bravely sacrificing so much to help those in trouble. 

I asked Hiba about what led her to writing children's stories, and what we can do to gently introduce young minds to serious themes and issues such as war and persecution. We talked about cats, strawberry bonbons, friendship, family, courage, dreaming, Paris, hidden histories and so much more. 

Hiba Noor Khan is the author of 6 books for children, including Safiyyah's War, How to Spaghettify your Dog, The Little War Cat, Inspiring Inventors and One Home. The Little War Cat, published in 2020 was long-listed for the Jhalak Prize and the UKLA Book Award and her work has been translated into Swedish, Korean, Turkish, Breton, Chinese, and counting. She secretly wants to be an explorer, and is happiest surrounded by nature, especially near the ocean.

I hope you love this episode as much as I do. 

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On the show this week, I spoke to the lovely Sara Nisha Adams about her two books, The Reading List and The Twilight Garden. This was such a wholesome, uplifting conversation where we talked about the importance of uplifting stories, hope, grief, community, libraries, gardening and so much more. We talked about our names, and the thought, experience and conscious choices that go into choosing names for ourselves, and those we love.

Sometimes, the news and social media is flooded with difficult stories, sad news and alarming statistics. It can get a bit too much. That’s why I think we always need stories that are full of hope and warmth, reminding us that although there might be sadness and challenges, there is much love and light in the world, and in our lives too. For this reason, I love the work of Sara Nisha Adams, an author whose books are uplifting, warm and wholesome. Sara Nisha’s books are based around community, togetherness, making unlikely friendships, healing from grief and loneliness, and finding and choosing family. I have loved the two books she’s written so far, and I’m so glad she’s my guest this week.

Sara Nisha Adams is a writer and editor. She lives in London and was born in Hertfordshire to Indian and English parents. Her debut novel The Reading List is partly inspired by her grandfather, who lived in Wembley and immediately found a connection with his granddaughter through books. Her latest novel, The Twilight Garden came out in June 2023. It tells the story of warring neighbours, Winston and Bernice, who put aside their differences to nurture and grow a communal garden. What develops is an unlikely friendship, healing from grief and so much more. 

I loved speaking with Sara Nisha, and hope you loved this conversation too.

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What happens when two people are deeply in love, but they want different things for their future? Can a relationship, or a marriage, work its way around fundamental things like having kids, career goals and what family should look like? Is love enough, and do we really listen when women tell us what they want from life?

This week, I spoke to Krystle Zara Appiah about her debut novel, Rootless. In Rootless, we’re presented with Efe and Sam, two people massively in love who get married to build a life together. We follow them on their journey as they grow and change in love, but also as they face huge hurdles when it comes to deciding how they want their life to look like. Certain that she doesn’t want to be a mother, Efe finds herself living a life very different to what she truly longs for, and we follow the couple as they navigate through life’s big questions. 

Krystle Zara Appiah is a Ghanaian writer and screenwriter, born and raised in London. She has a degree in literature and creative writing from the University of Kent. In 2020, she was one of forty writers selected for the London Library's Emerging Writers Programme. She also works as a children's books editor.

Rootless is her debut novel.  

Thank you so much to Krystle for a moving and insightful conversation! I loved every second of it, and hope you do too. 

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On this week’s episode, I’m talking to Vanessa Chan about her debut novel, an absolutely mesmerising story set across two timelines: 1930s and 1945 in Malaya – what Malaysia was called before independence. It is a story with four different perspectives, following the decision made by one woman to become a spy for Japan, and the dreadful consequences that befall her family and country, afterwards. 

Vanessa Chan is the Malaysian author of The Storm We Made, a national bestseller, Good Morning America Book Club Pick and BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. Acquired by international publishers in a flurry of auctions, the novel, her first, will be published in more than twenty languages worldwide. Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more. Vanessa grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn.

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On this week's episode, I spoke to Eleanor Shearer about her debut novel, River Sing Me Home.

River Sing Me Home is the story of Rachel, who escapes the plantation where she was enslaved and later forced to work for years, unpaid. She runs in search of her five children who had been taken from her over the years, hoping to reconnect with them and reunite her family. It is a moving novel about love, family, freedom, storytelling, resilience, strength and hope.

In our conversation, we talk about the 1843 Slavery Emancipation act, narratives around slavery, re-telling history, the concept of freedom, the importance of storytelling and so much more.

Eleanor Shearer is a mixed-race writer and the granddaughter of Windrush generation immigrants. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the English coast so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea. She currently works for a think tank. For her Master's degree in Politics at the University of Oxford, Eleanor studied the legacy of slavery and the case for reparations, and her fieldwork in St. Lucia and Barbados helped inspire her first novel.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, and I would love to hear from you.

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This week, I spoke to the incredibly warm and super inspiring author, Marjan Kamali. Marian's latest novel, The Stationery Shop of Tehran has been adored by readers all over the world, and praised for its epic and beautiful love story. The book is set amidst massive political upheaval in Iran in 1953. We follow two young lovers, Roya and Bahman, who become estranged for decades, until they are reunited 60 years later in the United States. The Stationery Shop of Tehran is a really stunning novel, exploring what happens when we lose our homes and our country, finding and rebuilding ourselves, love, the importance of closure, and how amid hardship and loss, there is also much to gain. 

Marjan Kamali is the award-winning author of The Stationery Shop, a bestseller, and Together Tea, a Massachusetts Book Award finalist. She is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.

Marjan’s novels are published in translation in more than 20 languages (19 languages for The Stationery Shop and 8 languages for Together Tea). Her essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University, and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from New York University. Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, Kamali spent her childhood in Turkey, Iran, Germany, Kenya, and the U.S.  She currently teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and lives in the Boston area with her family.

I loved every second of speaking with Marjan, and hope you do too. If you enjoyed the podcast, please follow the Diverse Bookshelf on your podcast platform of choice and connect with me on social media. I would really appreciate it if you could rate and leave a review, as it helps more people find the podcast. 

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This week, I spoke to Mai Al-Nakib about her stunning novel, An Unlasting Home. It is an epic inter-generational saga that spans time and place, exploring the idea of home, belonging and identity. With themes of birds and water running throughout, the book explores what happens when we leave our homes, or are made to leave, and how sometimes places let us go themselves. We follow Sara, a university philosophy lecturer, as she finds herself accused of Blasphemy, which has just been introduced as a capital crime, punishable by death. As she navigates this impossibly difficult situation, she uncovers and explores the stories of the women who raised her and came before her, and how every moment too led to right now.

Mai Al-Nakib was born in Kuwait and spent the first six years of her life in London, Edinburgh, and St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a PhD in English literature from Brown University and is Associate Professor of English and comparative literature at Kuwait University. Her academic research focuses on cultural politics in the Middle East, with a special emphasis on gender, cosmopolitanism, and postcolonial issues. Her short story collection, The Hidden Light of Objects, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014. It won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s 2014 First Book Award, the first collection of short stories to do so. Her debut novel is called An Unlasting Home, was published recently

I loved every second of speaking with Mai, and hope you do too. If you enjoyed the podcast, please follow the Diverse Bookshelf on your podcast platform of choice and connect with me on social media. I would really appreciate it if you could rate and leave a review, as it helps more people find the podcast. 

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On this week's episode, I spoke to Mona Hajjar Halaby about her memoir, In My Mother's Footsteps. Mona's mother was a Palestinian refugee, who fled Palestine in 1948 at the time of the Nakba and the creation of the state of Israel. She lived in Egypt with her husband and two daughters until 1961, when the family became refugees once more, and moved to Switzerland. In her book, Mona shares her mother's experiences of growing up in Palestine, being forced to leave her home, and her Palestinian identity. Mona spends a year working at a school in Ramallah, teaching children about communication and conflict resolution. During this time, she makes the journey to her mother's home village, uncovering deeper layers of her own identity.

In this episode, we talk about identity, belonging, returning home and the refugee crisis. 

Mona Hajjar Halaby is a Palestinian-American educator, writer and social historian. In order to preserve Palestinian culture and heritage, she has created "British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library" on Facebook, and "The Palestine Ethnographic Society." She collaborated on an interactive documentary "Jerusalem We Are Here," which takes participants on a walking tour of a neighborhood in Jerusalem past and present, and presents a map that documents the houses in the neighborhood with their documents, photos, and stories. Hajjar-Halaby has written a parenting book, a book on her classroom practice and has a new book coming out in May entitled, "In My Mother’s Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home."

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