ثلاثية غرناطة
The Granada Trilogy is Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour's acclaimed historical saga of a Muslim family in Spain in the wake of catastrophe. It opens in 1491, on the eve of the fall of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia, and follows the household of Abu Jaafar, a Granadan bookbinder, across five generations as their world is slowly, systematically dismantled.
Through the family's marriages, births, and losses, the trilogy traces what it meant to live through conquest: the broken promises of the victors, the public burning of Arabic books, forced baptism and the banning of language and dress, the terror of the Inquisition, and the final expulsion of the Moriscos. Some of Abu Jaafar's descendants try to assimilate and survive in silence; others join the doomed resistance in the mountains; the healer Saleema pays a terrible price for her learning; and each must decide how to hold on to faith, memory, and identity as everything familiar is stripped away.
Comprising the novels Granada, Maryama, and Departure, Ashour's trilogy is a landmark of modern Arabic literature—an intimate, elegiac meditation on loss, resilience, and cultural erasure, told with quiet lyricism and deep historical feeling.
A Granadan bookbinder whose household is followed across five generations of conquest and loss.
Abu Jaafar's great-great-grandson and the last of the line, taught Arabic by his grandfather Hasan and passing it on in turn.
A resilient family member whose line carries the saga forward; the trilogy's second novel is named for her.
A healer in the family who pays a terrible price for her learning.
Abu Jaafar's apprentice, who becomes part of the family.