The COMEDY Book List

What makes a book funny? Sometimes, it’s laugh-out-loud absurdity, sometimes sharp satire, dark humor, outrageous characters, or the sheer ridiculousness of everyday life that is so surreal in itself that humor becomes the only way to survive it. This list brings together a mix of books written by SWANA writers that find comedy even in the darkest circumstances. Some titles are playful, others biting and subversive, and a few are so painfully honest that their humor arises from the characters’ disastrous choices and their efforts to make sense of an often-absurd world. Together, they not only challenge the notion that “comedy” must fit a single mold, but also showcase the many innovative ways writers turn discomfort, chaos, and even pain into laughter. In doing so, they offer insight, resilience, and fresh perspectives on life’s complexities.

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We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad, Scribner, 2026

Awad’s second novel revisits the world of the four Bunnies, both before and after the events depicted in her acclaimed debut, Bunny (2020). In this sequel, Samantha Heather Mackey is a successful novelist. Her acclaimed debut has exposed the strange and unsettling events that took place within the Bunnies’ MFA program at Warren University. While on a book tour, Samantha is kidnapped. As her abductors insist on telling her their own version of events, the experience forces Samantha to confront her own recollections of their shared past. The saccharine politeness of the Bunnies, complete with their obsessive “Bunny” language, sits hilariously alongside the violence. Awad skillfully skewers the competitive world of MFA programs and literary culture, pitting it against the egos and rivalries of female friendship. The result is a novel the publisher aptly describes as a “darkly hilarious romp.”

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine, Grove Atlantic, 2026

If you want a book that can make you laugh one minute and wince the next, this is the perfect choice. The heart of the novel is the wonderfully chaotic relationship between Raja, a 63-year-old gay philosophy professor, and his formidable, endlessly opinionated mother, Zalfa. Their relationship is full of the kind of petty arguments, blunt observations, misunderstandings, and affectionate exasperation that feel both outrageous and strangely familiar. Raja’s dry, self-deprecating voice and jokes sit alongside personal grief, war, loss, and political turmoil without diminishing the seriousness beneath. The result is a dark, witty, deeply Lebanese comedy where laughter becomes both a form of resistance and a way of making sense of an unruly life.

On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, Peirene Press, 2026

In On the Greenwich Line, Shady Lewis takes readers into the everyday world of an Egyptian narrator working in a London housing office where the routines of paperwork and public services bring him face-to-face with the city’s complicated realities. Lewis employs a dry, deadpan narrator who tries to reconcile two worlds: the Egypt he comes from and the adopted city he now lives in. Day after day, he encounters people grappling with eviction, poverty, immigration, and the tangle of bureaucracy, while attempting to navigate rules that often feel disconnected from their realities. At the same time, he negotiates his own complicated relationship with Britain, a place where he wants to build a home, yet constantly feels like an outsider. With uncanny humor and keen insight into human behavior, Lewis turns ordinary life into a comic exploration of belonging in contemporary London.

The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Sharawi the Adulterer by Bilal Fadl, translated by Osama Hammad, DarArab, 2025

Recently reviewed in TMR, Fadl’s novel immerses readers in the gritty underbelly of 1990s Cairo, following a young man from Alexandria who arrives in 1991 to pursue his studies. He soon finds himself living in a chaotic apartment run by Um Mimi, a colorful and retired madam. Fadl’s humor springs from his larger-than-life characters and his unapologetically raw storytelling. He weaves vulgar jokes, outrageous descriptions, and sharp observations throughout the narrative, bringing to life characters rooted in the real absurdities of Cairo’s fringes. These figures stumble through poverty, desire, morality, and the daily struggle for survival, making the novel both darkly funny and poignantly authentic. For a comedy pick that is bawdy, with a taste for life’s messier side, this novel is hard to resist.

The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, Simon & Schuster, 2025

If you appreciate humor with a sharp social edge, this book is an excellent choice. The Persians follows the lives of three generations of women in the Valiat family, a once-powerful Iranian clan whose fortunes have been transformed by the Iranian Revolution and the challenges of life in the diaspora. The narrative shifts between America and Iran, gradually unveiling the family’s complicated history, secrets, and fractured relationships. It opens in 2005 during the family’s annual vacation in Aspen as one of the daughters is arrested for attempted prostitution. From there, the story descends into chaos as the family’s outrageous behavior keeps pushing serious subjects (exile, identity, expectations on women) into wonderfully comic territory. It’s witty, observant, and just messy enough to make dysfunctional family life feel very, very funny.

The Coin by Yasmin Zaher, Catapult Books, 2024

This novel offers a brilliantly deadpan, absurd comedic narrative centered on an unnamed, affluent Palestinian woman who relocates from Palestine to New York City to take a teaching post at a middle school. As she adjusts to her new surroundings, she becomes increasingly fixated on cleanliness and control, forges unconventional relationships with her students, and strikes up a friendship with Trenchcoat, a homeless con artist. Haunted by the belief that a coin she swallowed as a child remains lodged in her back, she is constantly weighed down by this peculiar obsession. The plot takes a delightfully unpredictable twist with the introduction of a Birkin-bag scheme, further enhancing the novel’s inventive charm. Zaher skilfully examines themes of Palestinian identity and displacement, crafting a story rich with nuance and depth while avoiding the pitfalls of a conventional political narrative.

Shalash the Iraqi by Shalash, translated by Luke Leafgren, And Other Stories, 2023

Rather than following a traditional linear narrative, this book unfolds as a madcap, episodic portrait of Baghdad in the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion. Shalash the Iraqi originated as a series of anonymous blog posts written in Baghdad between 2005 and 2006, circulating by printouts and word of mouth. The stories are set within a single Baghdad neighborhood but, through their mix of gossip, folk tales, dirty jokes, and political parody, the neighborhood becomes a microcosm of the entire country. Shalash’s Baghdad teems with con artists, holy fools, politicians, clerics, and ordinary neighbors, all navigating a city where each life hangs precariously by a thread. The book delivers raucous laughter and social commentary, yet beneath the surface lies something darker: a society trying to survive the impossible by laughing at it.

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat, Catapult Books, 2020

In this dark, self-deprecating novel, which relies on observational humor rather than conventional comedy, a young Palestinian American woman moves through a series of intense, complicated relationships with women and men, interrogating desire, family expectations, queerness, and the question of where she belongs. Affairs, impulsive hook-ups, emotional entanglements, and questionable decisions pile up, often with the narrator fully aware that she is making a mess of things. That self-awareness is where the humor lies—the narrator doesn’t pretend to have herself figured out. Instead, she lets us laugh at the contradictions and excesses that make her life complicated as she navigates the gap between who she thinks she is and who her family thinks she should be.

Hot Maroc by Yasin Adnan, translated by Alexander E. Elinson, Syracuse University Press, 2021

A personal favorite, this novel masterfully blends humor and satire with incisive political and social commentary, delving into themes of media manipulation, envy, corruption, and the dynamics of power. The story centers on Rahhal Laâouina, a timid, socially awkward underachiever in Marrakech, who opens a cybercafé and becomes engrossed in the internet, crafting multiple fake online identities to anonymously spread rumors and target those he envies on the notorious Hot Maroc website. As his online antics grow bolder and more impactful, Rahhal unexpectedly attracts the attention of the country’s security services, who decide to recruit him for their own shadowy purposes. The novel is as much a dark comedy as it is a sharp critique of contemporary Moroccan society, offering readers a vivid glimpse into the intersections of technology, power, and human frailty.

Always Coca-Cola by Alexandria Chreiteh, translated by Michelle Hartman, Interlink Books, 2011

Don’t let the older publication date deter you. This book is as relevant and resonant now as when it first appeared, speaking powerfully to the present moment, particularly the absurdity between conservative and modern expectations on Arab women. The novel follows Abeer, a young student in Beirut, whose life is shaken up by her friendship with Yana, a much more sexually liberated and adventurous woman. As she observes Yana and navigates her own romantic and social life, Chreiteh plays with the gap between what young Lebanese women are expected to be and what they actually want, poking fun at beauty standards, consumer culture, sexuality, dating, and the pressure to be respectable. It’s cheeky and slightly uncomfortable, but you’ll be surprised by how fresh and contemporary it feels, making it a truly rewarding read for anyone who likes stories that stand the test of time.