Saara El-Arifi

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-28

Saara El-Arifi was born in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and is of Sudanese and Ghanaian descent; her father was raised Muslim and her mother Christian, and the family later relocated to Sheffield, England. She holds a BA (Hons) in Theatre Studies from the University of Kent and an MA in African Studies from SOAS University of London. Represented by literary agent Juliet Mushens of Mushens Entertainment, El-Arifi launched her fiction career in 2022 with The Final Strife, the first volume of the Ending Fire trilogy, an epic fantasy inspired by West African and Middle Eastern mythologies in which blood color determines social caste; the trilogy continued with The Battle Drum (2023) and concluded with The Ending Fire (2024). The Final Strife was named one of the year's best books of 2022 by a major online retailer. She subsequently began the romantasy Faebound trilogy with Faebound (2024), which became an instant number-one Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the TikTok Book Awards UK & Ireland in 2024. She has also written the historical novel Cleopatra (2026) for HarperCollins, dramatizing Cleopatra VII's discovery that she is destined to become Pharaoh. El-Arifi's fantasy work is notable for centering African and diasporic mythological traditions within commercially successful epic and romantic fantasy.

Universe(s)

Books

• Faebound (2024) · Faebound Core Canon
• Cursebound (2025) · Faebound Core Canon
• Earthbound (2026) · Faebound Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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