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
4 - From Khamsat aṣwāt to al-Markab: ‘Writing about the People of Iraq’
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
Ghāʾib was burning inside. I know that. Whenever I had the chance to meet him in Moscow, I'd say to him, ‘You're amazing, Ghāʾib. You keep writing, while many people around you are consumed by events.’ He'd smile sadly, saying that he was suffering a lot, that he was feeding of himself. Then he'd burst out laughing: ‘You could say I'm a camel. Yes, I feel like a camel. I feed of what's left inside me, in my memory, which is running out. But if I didn't write, I mean write about the people of Iraq, I'd die.’
Muḥammad Dakrūb (1991): 156Fiction or Documentary?
As we have seen in the previous chapter, Farmān gives a largely multivoiced structure to his first novel al-Nakhla wa-’l-jīrān (‘he Palm Tree and the Neighbours’). In most of his novels he adopts a similar strategy, whereby chapters are narrated from the perspective of a variety of characters. His second novel, Khamsat aṣwāt (‘Five Voices’, 1967; henceforth Khamsat), and last novel, al-Markab (‘he Boat’, 1989), are no exception. In the former, Farmān follows five friends in Baghdad during the spring/summer of 1954, as they move between personal crises, political turmoil and natural disasters. Similarly, Markab focuses on five characters who live in Baghdad, but this time the action takes place after 1968, probably in the early to mid-1970s, and the characters are all employed by the ubiquitous state-run muʾassasa (company).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Iraqi NovelKey Writers, Key Texts, pp. 115 - 138Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013