Writings
Shammas’ first novel, Arabesques, was written in Hebrew and published in 1986 in Israel to wide acclaim. The book’s themes and rich and multilayered Hebrew raised questions about Israelis’ exclusive ownership of the language, and was hailed as "a turning point in Israel’s cultural life". Among his awards and honors: the 1991-92 Whiting Award, and the 1993 Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award.

1974: (prisoner of my awakening and slumber)
A poetry collection published in Arabic by Dogma Press, Jerusalem

1974: (Hardcover) (Krikhah Kashshah):
A poetry collection published in Hebrew by Sifriyat Po'aleem, Tel-Aviv.

1978 - 79: (A Hole in the Wall )
A bilingual play in Arabic & Hebrew, staged by the Haifa Theatre..

1979 (No Man's Land) (Shetah Hefkeir)
A poetry collection published in Hebrew by Hakibbutz Hame’uhad, Tel Aviv.

1986: Arabesques
First published in Hebrew as Arabeskot by Am Oved, this novel was extensively reviewed in the international press. In a front page review, the New York Times Book Review called the book "an ornate twining and twisting of memory, myth, history and self-consciousness". The newspaper’s editors also chose it as one of the best seven fiction works of 1988.

Among the book’s seven translations: English in 1988 by Harper & Row in NY, and Viking in London; Spanish in 1988 by Mondadori, as Arabescos; Dutch in 1989 by Bert Bakker in Amsterdam as Arabesken; German in 1989 by Piper Verlag in Munich as Arabesken; Italian in 1990 by Mondadori in Milan as Arabeschi; and Portuguese in 1991 by Dom Quixote as Arabescos.

1997: (Wash your face, O Moon)
A play in Arabic produced by the Arab Theatre in Israel. It tells the story of two Palestinian-Israeli burglars who break into an Arab apartment in a Jewish neighborhood in Haifa, in the year 2012. They soon discover that they are locked in, and they are later joined by an old, hunted Palestinian. The play addresses the question of blurring and loss of identity of Palestinian-Israelis.

In addition, Anton Shammas has written a children’s book in Hebrew, and has translated novels, poems and plays from Hebrew into Arabic, from Arabic into Hebrew, and from English into Arabic and Hebrew. He has also written essays, Op-Ed pieces and book reviews for the New York Times, The NYT Book Review, Harper’s Magazine, the LA Times, etc.. Many of which were subsequently translated by a number of European journals and reviews.