Most English-language readers, even committed ones, have read very little Arabic fiction in translation. The list below is a starter shelf — ten novels widely available in English, drawn from the major regional traditions, that together give you a first sense of the form. They are not the ten "best" Arabic novels (a meaningless phrase) but the ten the editors of Arabic Lit Hub would press into the hands of a friend who asked where to begin.
Read in order, they trace an arc from Mahfouz's mid-century Cairo realism through the Palestinian short fiction of the 1960s, the Sudanese postcolonial encounter, the Lebanese war novel, the Saudi oil epic, and the Iraqi diaspora generation, ending in the very recent International Booker-winning novels from Oman and Lebanon.
Each selection links to its full Arabic Lit Hub author page, where you can read more about the writer and find a longer bibliography.
Palace Walk
The first volume of the Cairo Trilogy. The single most important Arabic novel of the twentieth century and an unimprovable starting point for the form.
Season of Migration to the North
A short, dense, devastating Sudanese novel that rewrites Conrad and that the Arab Literary Academy named the most important Arabic novel of the twentieth century.
Men in the Sun
The foundational text of Palestinian fiction. A novella you can read in one sitting; you will not forget the ending.
Midaq Alley
If Palace Walk feels long, start here: a single Cairo alley as a complete world.
Gate of the Sun
The most ambitious novel of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon. Long, oral, and humane.
Cities of Salt
The novel of the Arabian oil encounter, banned in Saudi Arabia, the unmatched record of what oil did to a desert society.
The Corpse Washer
The major Iraqi-diaspora novel of the post-2003 catastrophe — quiet, ritual, devastating.
Celestial Bodies
The first Arabic novel to win the International Booker. A multi-generational Omani family saga that opens up the Gulf.
Voices of the Lost
The 2019 IPAF winner — a chain of unsent letters across the Arab diaspora. Short, chilly, original.
Frankenstein in Baghdad
The major recent Iraqi novel, a magical-realist metaphor for the body politic of the occupation years.