“There are readers, authors, writers, and storytellers at different levels,” Fatma Helal stole a glance from her workspace and placed herself within a category that she felt was more than just a writer. “I have always been a carrying with me the scenes, the places, and the whole atmosphere of the story inside my imagination. The characters were born there, they lived there, they spoke to me and told me their tales.” Her first book, “The Legend of Moura: Swallows and Vultures,” is the product of years of storytelling instinct glowing up the paper, and it is released during a time when publishing demographics are changing and reader’s preference are showing more interest in maritime adventures led by women.
The sales in the publishing industry reached $32.5 billion in 2024, which is a 4.1 percent increase compared to the previous year, with the fiction market for adults being the strongest. If in 1960, female authors represented only 18% of new books, now women account for the majority of books in the market, a remarkable change. Helal’s debut is a historical fiction with an adventurous perspective that, through the eyes of Isabel Cardoso, a Portuguese shipbuilder’s granddaughter, reinterprets 18th-century piracy as the story of a woman who turns betrayal into freedom.
Photo courtesy of Fatma Helal
A Novel Born from Maritime Rebellion
The Legend of Moura: Swallows and Vultures” takes the viewer to 18th-century Portugal where the life of a lady from Porto, Isabel Cardoso, who dreams of sailing and seeing the world is told. After being deceived by her closest ally, Isabel opts for taking the control of her life. She does not only confiscate the things that rightfully belong to her but also takes the betrayer’s boots, buys a ship, and sails with a handful of crew who become her family.
The publishing industry in the Middle East is expected to be worth more than $2.8 billion by 2025 and the digital book market to increase by 18 percent in 2024 while audiobooks will have a 27 percent growth rate. In the past, female writers from the region were rarely recognized in the world markets but now more and more with the works of authors like Jokha Alharthi and Adania Shibli being the ones to open the way for the acknowledgment of various voices. Helal’s novel is in line with the trend in which global publishers are more interested in stories depicting women’s empowerment set in the difficult cultural contexts.
Chosen Family as Revolutionary Act
Isabel’s company is made up of Éder and Inez, the twins who overcame the difficulties of childhood, Amine, a cook from Tangier, Azhar and Ceferino, two excellent warriors, and Tomé, a wanderer from Macau. They all together make an entirely new pirate crew that puts loyalty, the ability to think quickly, and freedom above gold. The mixture of different characters is not only a reflection of the past, when mariners of all races mingled, but also a current trend in storytelling that emphasizes cultural cooperation.
“Every single character is extremely important to me, and they all are like my children,” said Helal. “I wish to see young people dressing up as them for parties. I want the readers to stay with my characters and to experience them.”
The footwear Isabel takes off becomes a symbol that recurs through the whole story, signifying her defiance, her legacy, and the enigmatic link between the woman she turns into and the myth she is fated to encounter.
Craft and Emotional Depth
The detail and emotion both characterize Helal’s writing to a large extent. The whole settings including ports, shipyards, and coastlines not only served as the background but also helped the author in developing her characters through a sensory experience which was very vivid to the readers. Isabel is viewed as a sincere and strong-willed young girl who slowly but surely comes to her power. Her yearning for Ana Maria, her childhood companion whom she had to part with, infects the story with a subtle pain underneath the adventure, thereby increasing its complexity from an emotional viewpoint.
One of the narrative techniques’ mastery is the ability to interlace the different stories. Isabel’s individual trail, her interaction with the shipmates, her desire for Ana Maria, the stolen boots, and the whole adventure are all grounded in a single plot that flows naturally. Helal’s novel does not just look into the themes of friendship and love, but also to the theme of empowerment, where none is given preference.
Crime and thriller novels, whose sales had shot up in 2024 in three-quarters of the surveyed countries, are often associated with characters that are very multifaceted and that have to deal with complex moral issues. Romance novels, mainly the ones that have been favored by the BookTok community, went through a transformation that led to the inclusion of darker, and more psychologically complex aspects. The way Helal writes is similar to this trend that leads to the acceptance of hard-hitting realities in the narratives’ power play as well as the expenses involved to win one’s freedom.
Columbia University literary expert Dr. Margaret Chen gives a balanced evaluation. “There is a constant danger for authors who want to bring historical omissions to notice by means of novel writing,” she remarks. “The readers may be doubtful about the genuineness, or they may think that present-day attitudes are being forced on the past. The difficulty then lies in the fact that the writer has to be so good as to draw characters from the past who are not only credible but also are able to communicate effectively with the modern-day audience.”
Historical Fiction’s Contemporary Resonance
Helal sets her story in an era full of potential. The 18th century was a time of great change in the world, where there were disruptions in global trade, spreading colonialism, and people on the move crossing oceans. The sea imbued power struggles, survival, and the birth of identities with a nature that freed them from traditional social confinement, thus making it the perfect place for their occurrences and studies.
Historical fiction is doing very well in the market and often shows women’s positions in the past while making comments on the present gender dynamics. Isabel’s transition from Porto shipyards to owning her ship is very much in tune with the public’s discourse about ladies usurping the male-dominated occupational gambling.
The international author supply chains still remain quite complicated and troublesome to deal with. The help of literary agents is quite indispensable for authors getting through these hardships. In fact, the growing number of agencies that are specifically dealing with the representation of diverse voices is an optimistic signal for those writers who want to be appreciated by the international crowd.
The first novels’ triumphs more and more depend on the author’s capacity to gather people around his or her work. Social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, are major factors in changing the literary culture through peer recommendations and user-generated content. Just BookTok is a huge force behind the sales of those books that win over the community’s imagination.
Maritime adventure novels, especially the ones with female leads, could strongly connect with the communities who are looking for alternatives to the traditional historical narratives. The readers who loved current hits in pirate-themed fiction, fantasy with sea adventures, or historical novels about women in extraordinary roles are the ones to be targeted as the main audience.
Many years of effort lead to the moment when a manuscript is turned into a published book, where private creative work becomes a public artifact that anyone can interpret, critique, and praise. Research conducted by big retailers indicates that a mere 0.01% of books reach the sales figure of over 100,000 copies, thus highlighting the industry’s fierce competition.
In 2025, the publishing world presents both a bright and a dark side. The demand for different authors and intricate stories is clear in the market trends. What sets the successful first-time authors apart is mostly the combination of the author’s vision, the reader’s willingness, and the right timing in the market.
More often than not, individual first-time authors do not change the literary scene with their debut book alone. Nevertheless, each of them has a say in the discussions of an increasingly open-minded literacy, the rise of the previously unheard voices, and the ways we perceive the world by means of storytelling.
Helal narrates her transition from being a kid who was captivated by pirates to eventually penning the entire heroic saga. “Ever since I was a kid, I have been infatuated with pirates, ships, and the sea. However, I never thought that I would one day write such a long and heroic tale, one that has so many characters and an entire world.”
Taking a deep breath, Helal speaks about her work in terms of the purity of the reasons behind it. “The ocean has always been a place where the tyrannies were the first to be buried,” she said. “Isabel takes what is hers and walks her own path both literally and metaphorically. She creates a clan out of strangers and shepherds them through the ashes of their real and imaginary concerns.” She takes another deep breath, taking time to think back on how the story developed. “The plot was female-oriented at first, but the male characters in the story developed along with me and became the major ones and the strongest besides. The narrative celebrates both the thrill and the pain, the liberty of the ocean and the price of staying put. It is that very tension between what we gain and what we lose when we choose ourselves that drives everything.”
*Spokesperson/Contact Name: Fatma Helal
*Placeline: United Arab Emirates
*Name of Company/Organization: Fatma Helal
*Website: http://fatmahilal.net
*Email Address: fatmahilal2022@gmail.com
