Lina Huyan Al-Hassan’s works explore the worlds of the Middle Eastern desert, making her the first to write about this unknown realm in her novel “Daughters of the Coffin,” published in 2005. This was followed by her 2009 novel “Sultanates of Sand,” after which she continued to delve into the Damascene society with works like “Diamonds and Women,” which made it to the shortlist for the Arabic Booker Prize. Other novels have explored the intricacies of Damascene women, such as “Complete Betrayal,” which tells the story of the last harem in Damascus and the first woman to drive a car in Syria. Her novel “Nazik Khanum” portrays a Damascene model living in Paris during the 1970s.

She has also written two novels about Aleppo: “Not a Stray Bullet” and “Antakya and the Kings of Concealment,” the latter of which made it to the longlist for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Her piece “The Fairy’s Heel” won the Ibn Battuta Award for Travel Literature in 2022. Critics consider her novel “The Ruler of the Two Fortresses” to be one of the first Arabic novels in the genre of mythopia, as it recounts the tales of the fairies, witches, and seers of the Levant. This novel also reached the longlist for the Arabic Booker Prize.

Her children’s literature trilogy made it to the shortlist for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Lina Huyan Al-Hassan’s works are among the best-selling books by writers of her generation, as she has ventured into unique areas that few authors have explored. In “The Ruler of the Two Fortresses,” she has transformed folk heritage into fresh modern literature, creating an emotional document capable of shaking the foundations of thought, the poles of emotion, and the manifestations of the spirit while raising philosophical debates about the realm of the unseen, metaphysics, and all the extraordinary worlds that we may not acknowledge exist.