Qantara.de - Dialog mit der islamischen Welt

London-based author Hisham Matar writes about the disappearance of his father, a member of the Libyan opposition who was kidnapped while exiled in Cairo and has never been seen since. In ″The Return″, Matar describes his own fruitless search to trace his father and Libya′s brief moment of hope following the fall of Gaddafi. Interview by Claudia MendeMore

Bachtyar Ali, probably the best known contemporary novelist and poet from the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, has produced a major novel about art and reconciliation. It has recently been translated into German and is proving a major success. By Stefan WeidnerMore

He came to fame as the pianist who played in the rubble of war-torn Syria, but there is so much more to Aeham Ahmad than that. He's now a popular musician and has made a home for himself and his family in the German city of Wiesbaden. By Annabelle Steffes-HalmerMore

The Berlin exhibition "Jews, Christians and Muslims: Scientific Discourse in the Middle Ages 500–1500" shows the circuitous routes by which knowledge made its way around the medieval world while dismantling the theory of a Judeo-Christian Europe. By Gustav SeibtMore

Shortly after Trump said the US would recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Jewish Museum Berlin opened a long-planned exhibition about Jerusalem, a city saturated with religion, politics, conflict and beauty. By Werner BlochMore

An inspirational idea from a violinist and a composer has led to the establishment of a new music festival on the Greek island of Chios. Their idea is to help build bridges between refugees and islanders – and maybe make the hard winter a little easier to bear. By Astrid KaminskiMore

In her bestselling novel "All the Rivers", Dorit Rabinyan tells the poignantly beautiful love story of an Israeli translator and a Palestinian painter in New York, a romance that eventually dies due to the apparently unsolvable Arab-Israeli conflict. By Volker KaminskiMore

Donia Maher′s award-winning graphic novel ″The Apartment in Bab El Louk″, featuring the combined talents of prominent Egyptian artist Ganzeer, political cartoonist Ahmed Nady and gifted translator Elisabeth Jaquette is a collaborative tour-de-force. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the bookMore

Egypt is in uproar over a film: a single woman marries solely in order to have a baby via a sperm donor and then gets divorced. A female television presenter who showcased the film and its controversial theme on her programme has been given a prison sentence. By Dunja RamadanMore