Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: The Awakening Story
- 2 Revolutionary Pioneer: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī in Six Stories
- 3 Realism and Space in the First Iraqi Novel
- 4 From Khamsat aṣwāt to al-Markab: ‘Writing about the People of Iraq’
- 5 The Other Shore: Dialogue and Diference in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's al-Shāṭiʿ al-thānī
- 6 Two Houses, Two Women: Iraq at War in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's Novels
- 7 Reading and Writing in al-Masarrāt wa-'l-awjāʿ by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- 8 The Long Way Back: Possibilities for Survival and Renewal in al-Rajʿ al-baʿīd by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- Epilogue: Relections on Iraqi Fiction, Inluence and Exile, or the Life and Times of Yūsuf Ibn Hilāl
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Realism and Space in the First Iraqi Novel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: The Awakening Story
- 2 Revolutionary Pioneer: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī in Six Stories
- 3 Realism and Space in the First Iraqi Novel
- 4 From Khamsat aṣwāt to al-Markab: ‘Writing about the People of Iraq’
- 5 The Other Shore: Dialogue and Diference in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's al-Shāṭiʿ al-thānī
- 6 Two Houses, Two Women: Iraq at War in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's Novels
- 7 Reading and Writing in al-Masarrāt wa-'l-awjāʿ by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- 8 The Long Way Back: Possibilities for Survival and Renewal in al-Rajʿ al-baʿīd by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- Epilogue: Relections on Iraqi Fiction, Inluence and Exile, or the Life and Times of Yūsuf Ibn Hilāl
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
They imagined that [writing novels] was an amazing thing that no Iraqi writer could ever achieve, as if authors of novels in other countries had dropped out of the sky.
al-Sayyid, Introduction, Maṣīr al-ḍuʿafāʾ (1922: 82)Before 1966, the date of publication of Ghāʾib Tuʿma Farmān's first novel, al-Nakhla wa-’l-jīrān (‘he Palm Tree and the Neighbours’), several Iraqi novels of note had already appeared, apart from the three works discussed in Chapter 1. Among these are ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Fāḍil's Majnūnān (‘Two Madmen’, 1939) and Dhū al-Nūn Ayyūb's al-Yad wa-’l-arḍ wa-’l-māʾ (‘Hand, Earth and Water’, 1948). However, none of these works is on the same artistic level as Farmān's al-Nakhla wa-’l-jīrān, which is unanimously considered to be the true beginning of the artistically mature Iraqi novel (see, for example, Aḥmad 1977a: 115).
The main subject of this chapter is the depiction of Baghdad in al-Nakhla wa-’l-jīrān, but we will begin by giving a brief outline of the author's life and work.
Farmān's Life: Baghdad to Moscow
Farmān was born in Baghdad in the old, poor quarter of al-Murabbaʿ in 1927 and grew up during the Second World War. As we have seen in Chapter 2, this was a period of great political instability, which nevertheless played a positive role in the literary formation of Farmān's generation, as it further opened up Baghdad to outside influences.
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- Information
- The Iraqi NovelKey Writers, Key Texts, pp. 73 - 114Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013