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
Hanan Jasim-Khammas: On Writing the Body in Iraqi Literature After 2003
By Olivia Snaije Iraqi academic Hanan Jasim-Khammas was just 19 in 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse came to light. Later, as a student of comparative literature, she became fascinated by body and gender studies, which led her back to 2004, to examining the terrible and powerful representation of bodies in the Abu Ghraib scandal. “I couldn’t articulate how I felt about Abu Ghraib, how those images influenced me and other Iraqis. Up to this point, no one had asked the question of what the impact had been on the Iraqi psyche. What is a body, how is it formed in this society, and why this attack on the body during the military operations?” Jasim-Khammas ending up focusing her ...
Daisy Al-Amir’s ‘The Tale of the Oil Jug’
Each stood combing their hair and tidying their clothes and looking at themselves; some admiring themselves and some gazing at their reflections in despair. ...
An Excerpt from Faleeha Hassan’s ‘War And Me’
"From the events I recount in this memoir, you will understand that next to my name in the Unknown World or beside it at the moment I was born, the only comment inscribed must have been: 'Faleeha Hassan will coexist with war for most of the years of her life.'" ...
Sunday Submissions: Shakomako & BCLT ‘Stylistic Border Crossings’ Conference
Submissions have opened for Shakomako's print issue and for the British Centre for Literary Translation's new conference 'Stylistic Border Crossings in and Beyond Translation' ...
Recommended Reading: Novelist Hadiya Hussein on 5 Iraqi Books
Iraqi novelist Hadiya Hussein recommends five works of Iraqi literature ...
9 Short Stories by Iraqi Women, in Translation
Today, the last in our Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth) Wednesday series of “9 Stories” lists ...
