This is the month, the week, the fifteen minutes that the world is grappling with and reflecting on the US-led invasion of Iraq. But it’s been more than fifteen minutes for Iraqi authors; particularly those, like Ahmed Saadawi, who are still in Iraq:
Ahmed Saadawi: A Decade of Despair (New York Times)
“Suddenly,” he writes, “the power goes out, and everything around me switches off, except for the stream of endless questions.” (Trans. Ghenwa Hayek.)
Saadawi has published a volume of poetry, Anniversary of Bad Songs (2000) and two novels,The Beautiful Country (2004) and Indeed He Dreams or Plays or Dies (2008). He was also part of the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction Nadwa. An excerpt of Frankenstein in Baghdad appeared in the Beirut39 collection and in Banipal37.
Hassan Blassim: leave Iraq to its freedom (New Internationalist)
Blasim, a short-story writer, filmmaker, and playwright, has a new collection out in English (trans. Jonathan Wright), The Iraqi Christ. He said:
“Every year I want to come to Britain, but it’s so difficult because I am Iraqi and I need a visa. But now I have an invitation, I have my book. A British soldier, on the other hand, can go to Iraq without a visa, without an invitation and then kill people and leave. So what I say is, let us do our own democracy. Of course, it’s not going to be the same, it won’t be a copy of the democracy in Britain or the US.”
Mahmoud Saeed: Local novelist says Iraq war hardened sectarian rifts in Chicago
Dunya Mikhail: Revisiting Iraq Through The Eyes Of An Exiled Poet