This January 2022, we share our first “In Focus” section, edited by Hend Saeed. For “Canonical Works & New Voices,” we asked a number of Iraqi writers, translators, and scholars to put together a list of their highlights from Iraqi literature. In “30 Reads: A Month of Iraqi Women Writers,” we have 30 days of reading suggestions by women writers, originally composed in Arabic or Kurdish. Explore more special features below, with more from our archives on the left.
Focus IRAQ: Canonical Works & New Voices
By Hend Saeed, with Wiam El-Tamami We asked a number of Iraqi writers, translators, and scholars to put together a list of their highlights from Iraqi literature. Canonical Works If you were to choose 4-7 titles that would represent, to you, some form of Iraqi “canon,” what would they be? And (perhaps more importantly) why? DUNA GHALI Duna Ghali The Long Way Back by Fouad Al-Takarli , 1980Even if years have gone by since I ...
30 Reads: A Month of Iraqi Women Writers
By Hend Saeed and M Lynx Qualey Inspired by our Algeria & Morocco Editor Nadia Ghanem, who pioneered the "30 Reads" series with a list of recommended books by Algerian women writers, we have put together a look at 30 literary works by 30 different Iraqi women writers, in Arabic and Kurdish. Where possible, we have noted the English translation. Although there are many surviving classical works by women who lived in Iraq, including in ...
New Fiction in Translation: Two Stories by Yasmeen Hanoosh
Yasmeen Hanoosh's forthcoming short-story collection أطفال الجنة المنكوبة (Children of an Afflicted Paradise) was one of our "30 Reads: A Month of Iraqi Women Writers." One short story from that collection appeared in the Fall 2021 FOOTBALL issue of ArabLit Quarterly, and another is forthcoming in the Michigan Quarterly Review. Levi Thompson has translated two more stories from the collection. We share them here: The Little Dictator The Guardian Angel * Yasmeen Hanoosh is Iraqi-born ...
An Excerpt from Poet Salah Niazi’s Memoir: ‘Curious Passengers’
By Alexander Hong America's 2003 invasion of Iraq was a war of choice that led to the incalculable loss of life and well-being, as well as ancient artefacts documenting human civilization, and led directly to the rise of ISIS. But involvement in Iraq started decades before this, during the political tumult of the 1960s. This was in reaction to the mere presence of a communist movement in the only country in the Middle East known ...
Two Newly Translated Poems by Sargon Boulus
There can be no series on Iraqi poetry without an engagement with Sargon Boulos. It's coming. In the meantime, poet-novelist-translator Sinan Antoon has published two newly translated Boulus poems in Jadaliyya: They are "Times" and "A Pebble." The second is where Boulus's gifts really shine through Antoon's translation, Boulus's talent for the sweep of imagery alongside the terribly small, for seriousness and humor: There it is under your foot. Step on it if you wish ...
10 Iraqi Short Stories for the Shortest Day of the Year
Ten short stories for the shortest day of the year: "The Mulberry Tree," by Salima Saleh, trans. William Hutchins My city—Mosul—was economical even in its delights. "Don’t Put Your Elephant In Your Luggage," by Mortada Gzar, trans. Katharine Halls At arrivals at O’Hare, a man opened his bag at customs, and a large black elephant stepped out. “Lizards’ Colony,” by Mahmoud Saeed, trans. William Hutchins Why did it look pale blue in the morning? Distant ...
Ali al-Tajer on Book-cover Design and Iraqi Stories
By Hend Saeed Artist Ali al-Tajer graduated with a Master’s in Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1992. Throughout the 1990s, his interest in heritage and culture led him to researching contemporary artistic visions of the Epic of the Creation of Babel as well as Iraqi heritage more generally. As an artist, he has exhibited work in galleries around the region. Notably, his work has also been used to illustrate ...
‘The Poet of Life Which was Merciless to Him’: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra on Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
By Jabra Ibrahim Jabra Translated by Ghareeb Iskander It is very painful that the poet, whose main theme was the renewal of life, found himself for three long years contemplating the face of death when it was hovering over his head. Badr Shakir al-Sayyab mourned himself in poem after poem, with a fierce awareness of the abundance of life. Despite suffering unbearably from illness, it was as if Badr would push out this vicious intruder ...
On Playwright Yusuf al-Ani
Celebrated Iraqi playwright and actor Yusuf al-Ani (1927-2016) is at the center of the latest issue of the Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World, which has -- in addition to scholarly work on al-Ani's oeuvre -- translations by Salaam Yousif of al-Ani's poem ‘Pride’ and three scenes from his play Awailakh (Woe Unto Us): "Not all the doors are closed yet, not all the roads are blocked. We can start again, start by changing ...
Recommended Anthologies
‘Contemporary Iraqi Fiction,’ ed. Shakir Mustafa
’15 Iraqi Poets,’ ed. Dunya Mikhail
Banipal 72, Iraqi Jewish Writers
All Posts on Iraq
10 Iraqi Short Stories for the Shortest Day of the Year
“Good bye, then. You can’t understand my argument. I’m tired of what I have seen and heard from men.” ...
Friday Finds: New Work in Translation by Hassan Blasim, Fadwa Soleiman
Blasim also has a forthcoming novel, God 99, that follows Hassan Owl, an Iraqi who arrives in Finland as a writer and a refugee ...
10 Years of Comma Press: 5 Recommended Reads
Today marks 10 years of Comma Press. In celebration, we have five recommended reads ...
On Iraqi Poetry
For the next few months, ArabLit will be running a series of interviews and essays on Iraqi poetry: with poets, critics, translators, and others. August 1: Basim al-Ansar: ‘Poetry Is the Source of All the Arts’ Poet Basim Alansar was born in Baghdad in 1970. He has been publishing his poetry since the early 1990s and, since 1998, has made his home in Denmark. In 2009, he the only Iraqi poet to be named one the Hay Festival’s “Beirut39,” a list of 39 promising Arab authors under 39. He said: Poetry is the source of all the arts, and literature and science. It’s the spirit of existence, the meaning of our lives. And I meditate a lot on the essence ...
Why ‘Iraq Literary Review’?
This is what editor Sadek R. Mohamed asks in his introduction to the new magazine, and endeavors to answer ...
