This book is designed to fill a gap in existing research in English on modern Arabic fiction, which has covered Egyptian, Lebanese and other Arabic fiction but has barely begun to address the work of Iraqi writers. While the book certainly aims to answer questions about the development of Iraqi fiction, there will be a clear emphasis on four writers who started writing in the late 1940s and had their first significant short stories published in the 1950s: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī (1921–98), Ghāʾib Ṭuʿ ma Farmān (1927–90), Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Şaqr (1927–2006) and Fuʾād al-Takarlī (1927–2008).

The bulk of the book will focus on selected works of these four writers, and will take the form of detailed textual analyses of these works and an evaluation of their aesthetic and poetic qualities, rather than aiming to be a wide-ranging or comprehensive survey of Iraqi writers of the period. We consider this methodological approach to be largely absent from many studies (in English at least) of modern Arabic literature. Some of these are descriptive and over-ambitious in the range of works they aim to cover, while others view the literature from an overly theoretical or prescriptive angle. We hope that our approach will add to the body of accessible commentary in English on a neglected but illuminating area of postcolonial fiction, and also contribute to a timely improvement in the understanding of, and empathy with, wider Iraqi culture and society.