Arnold Zable (born 1947) is an Australian writer, novelist, storyteller and human rights advocate.
His books include the memoir Jewels and Ashes, three novels: Café Scheherazade, Scraps of Heaven, and Sea of Many Returns, two collections of stories: The Fig Tree and Violin Lessons, and The Fighter.
Australian critic Susan Varga says that Zable's award-winning memoir, Jewels and Ashes, "was a ground-breaking book in Australia, one of the first of what has since become a distinct auto/biographical genre: a second-generation writer returns to the scene of unspeakable crimes to try to understand a fraught and complex legacy, and, in so doing, embarks on a journey into the self.
We tend to forget, or fail to imagine, how difficult it is to start life anew far from the homeland.
We forget also that nostalgia, the longing for the return to homeland, is a deep and enduring aspect of the refugee experience.