Bint Battuta Diaries

Among our first illustrated children’s books, Rimal published the first comprehensive full-colour illustrated Arabic/Arabic dictionary for children in the elementary and intermediate levels, an achievement hailed in educational circles across the Middle East region.

We also re-introduced young readers to the works of the great storyteller Najwa Kawar Farah and her personal collection of Palestinian fables - Tales Beyond Time, Folktales from Palestine and the most recent beautifully produced collection Grandmothers’ Tales. We published the fables in both the English and Arabic languages. Spot and the Little Boy is another favourite. It is a story based on a real boy who, the author, Rym Ghazal, met during her humanitarian efforts. It's a touching tale about a neglected refugee child and how a little kitten changed his life.

A Rimal readers’ favourite is called Toulou and the Cats of Paphos, where they learn lessons from animals. It is akin to Animal Farm, but set on the island of Cyprus and Rimal published Geoff Unsworth’s Orwellian style tale of cats, rats, snakes and sea turtles. This book is suitable for both children and adults alike and was later transformed to the stage as a play.

Our latest, and possibly most uniquely produced book is called Nuwwara by Mimosa Al-Arawi and Mayda Freije Makdessi with its Arabic universal poetic symbols – it is simple yet magical.

The Rimal family love our children's collection, and at the same time we are privileged to have worked with a variety of prominent authors including Widad Kamel Kawar on Threads of Identity. Her book is a record of the 50 years she spent researching, collecting and preserving part of the heritage of Palestine. This endeavour evolved into the Widad Kawar Collection, the largest, to date, of Palestinian traditional dress and accessories, comprising more than 3,000 items.

Margarita Skinner’s Palestinian Embroidery Motifs is unlike previously published books on Palestinian embroidery. It is the first to document all the different motifs – over 200 – by origin and names used on the old dresses. We also published her most recent book, The Journeys of Motifs: From Orient to Occident, that was launched in Amman, Jordan.  

Our evolution over the past two and a half decades from publishing children books to embracing Middle Easter culture, art and history is an impressive one and in 1995 we expanded our horizons into the Middle Eastern history genre. We partnered up with London-based Melisende Publishing, where we co-published several books over a decade, starting with a highly successful historical and architectural guide to Syria.

We later began working with Gerald Butt, an award-winning BBC correspondent, on several books including, Life at the Crossroads, the first book published to reveal the rich history of Gaza. Continuously inhabited for more than 3,000 years at a key strategic crossroads of the region, Gaza has witnessed the rise and fall of dozens of kingdoms and dynasties. His second book with Rimal was History in the Arab Skies, it explores the close relationship between the Middle East and flying from the earliest days of flight and analyses of the decisive impact it had on the political complexion of the region.

We also enjoyed sharing Samia Khoury’s life story in Reflections from Palestine, a personal journey of hope; and Ahmed Masoud’s wild imagination through his novel, Vanished. We are proud to say that both books were shortlisted for the MEMO Palestine Book Awards in the UK.

People’s Museum was a fascinating project that we worked on with The Danish Arts Council. Every item in the collection was given to the museum by the citizens of Birzeit, and all the different stories in the book are transcribed into English and Arabic.

Niki Marangou was a good family friend and celebrated Cypriot author, poet and artist. We were fortunate to work with Niki prior to her passing in 2013 on her last book. We published and launched the book in her memory. The Sea is a simple yet beautiful book comprised of poetic text accompanied by exquisite images by Mexican photographer Selma Ancira. The book was published in Greek and English.

Renowned Iraqi architect, Maath Alousi, published his first book with us, called Nostos: Tale of a Street in Baghdad and the late Sherine Ben-Halim Jafar’s Under the Copper Covers is a wonderful culinary journey of a Libyan woman in search of her identity. It won the Gourmand Book Award (2017) for Best Arab Cuisine.

We also worked closely with the bold Norwegian journalist, Odd Karsten Tveit, on his critically acclaimed books Anna's House, the riveting story behind the American Colony in Jerusalem; and Goodbye Lebanon, where he deals with a series of dramatic periods in Lebanon’s recent history and weaves them together.

Living in Cyprus gave us the opportunity to collaborate with various local authors. We published Historic Nicosia, the first comprehensive and scholarly history of the capital of Cyprus - from the earliest times until the island's independence in 1960. Shirley Kay’s Olives & Lemons, gives the reader insight into the heart of Cyprus traditions and village life. We are also proud to have published the island’s first travel book, Cyprus: An Island Apart, based on a three-year personal journey of author Seamus MacHugh throughout the country. The author shared his experiences through adventure, humor and discovery of different parts of Cyprus.

Although poetry is not within our main publishing stream, we could not resist producing a most exquisite little book by the celebrated Lebanese artist and poet Afaf Zurayk. Her book of poems, Lovesong, is interspersed with drawings and paintings that are dreamy and ethereal in appearance, harmonizing with the theme of the collection. The book is an exquisite celebration of one of the deepest and strongest of human emotions - love. Lovesong was the recipient of the Beirut Art Book Fair Awrad (BABF).  

Last, but certainly not least - we are honored to be the exclusive publishers of Ghassan Kanafani’s entire collection of works. This project took nearly five years to re-publish. Although his works have already been published and re-published over the decades by many entities and in various languages, unfortunately, between piracy and lack of control the content of his books were distorted throughout the years. Our publisher, Nora Shawwa, took on the challenge of republishing Kanafani’s works. She spearheaded the initiative of reinstating the integrity of his works, and handing the Arab reader a quality book that both they and the iconic author deserve. She began by going back to his original writings. With the help of the Kanafani family, Rimal gained access to Ghassan’s original handwritten works. We digitized them all, then had each page typeset and proofed. We then had their team of editors comb through the content, maintaining the integrity of the text to the original as much as possible. This was an extensive project where our publisher and team worked long into the weekends and late nights for nearly four years. They then decided to base the entire concept of the book covers of the collection as a single and uniform series by using a single piece of artwork. It was hand-drawn by Ghassan Kanafani himself, keeping both the content and covers completely true to the author and his legacy. After publishing our Rimal edition of the Ghassan Kanafani complete works, we then created a collector’s edition - all 17 books cased into a beautiful box set using the same original Kanafani artwork. We feel privileged to be able to contribute to the world of Arabic literature, by elevating the quality at which books in the Arab world are presented to its readers.