The Iraqi Novel Key Writers, Key Texts (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Title from publishers bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Apr 2014)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-258) and index
Introduction : the awakening story -- Revolutionary pioneer : ʻAbd al-Malik Nūrī in six stories -- Realism and space in the first Iraqi novel -- From Khamsat aṣwāt to al-Markab : 'writing about the people of Iraq' -- The other shore : dialogue and difference in Mahdī ʻĪsā al-Ṣaqr's al-Shāṭiʼ al-thānī -- Two houses, two women : Iraq at war in Mahdī ʻĪsā al-Ṣaqr's novels -- Reading and writing in al-Masarrāt wa-ʹl-awjāʻ by Fuʼād al-Takarlī -- The long way back : possibilities for survival and renewal in al-Rajʻ al-baʻīd by Fuʼād al-Takarlī -- Epilogue : reflections on Iraqi fiction, influence and exile, or the life and times of Yūsuf Ibn Hilāl
Catherine Cobham and Fabio Caiani look in depth at four authors who started writing in Iraq in or around the 1950s to explore a pivotal moment in Iraqi novel writing. They analyse the key texts by Abd al-Malik Nuri, Gha'ib Tu'ma Farman, Mahdi Isa al-Saqr and Fu'ad al-Takarli, evaluating and comparing their aesthetic and poetic qualities. It is in these works that Iraqi fiction came of age and reached artistic maturity. The best of them are among the most complex portrayals of the particularities of life in Iraq and the human condition in general to come out of the Arab world