Mona Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954, escaped from Iraq with her family to Iran in 1970, immigrated to Israel in 1971, and moved to Germany in 1985.  She studied clinical psychology and French literature at Tel Aviv University and fine arts in Kassel (Germany).  She did conceptual art for a few years before she started writing.  Her first novel, When the Grey Beetles Took over Baghdad, published in London in 2000, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for Fiction in 2001. She published two photo books on the historical caravanserais in Istanbul, as well as short stories and essays in German and English magazines and anthologies.  In 2025, Vier Tage (Four Days) came out in German translation. 
Mona Yahia is based in Cologne, Germany, and writes in English.