The coup in 1958 by the Iraqi Free Officers led to the end of the rule of prime minister Nūrī al-Saʿīd and the British occupation and started President Qāsim’s presidential term. This resulted in political polarization between parties competing for state power which forced the fusion of political and culture and caused the literary outcome to be politically inflicted (reference).
The political competition existed among others between the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), the Nationalist Party, and the Baʿthist Party. An example is the competition trickling into literary outcome was President Qāsim’s increased interest in al-turāth al-shaʿbī (national heritage) such as Iraqi folklore, to counter the pan-Arab movement.
The political schisms and their bloody disputes led to the ten years following the coup to be characterized by successive military coups and countercoups, killings, detention of different party members, and bloodbaths (reference). The political competition ended with the Baʿthist coup in 1968. Furthermore, the period following the Coup marked the beginning of the ‘60s Generation’ of Iraq. Before gradually joining the ranks of the Baʿth Party in the 1970s or fleeing the country to form cultural opposition in diaspora, this group of writers used in their literary work elements of mystery, fantasy, magical realism, and hyper reality.
- Yūsūf al-ʿĀnī’s (1927 – 2016, Iraq / Jordan) play Anā Ummak yā Shākir (‘I am your mother, Shakir’, 1955) centres an Iraqi lower-middle-class family whose members join the events of the national movement raging around them in the run-up to the 1958 revolution (reference). The eldest son, Shākir, has been executed in prison by Iraqi despots and his presence in the play is only through a picture. His younger brother, Saʿūdī, is bound to meet the same faith. Their sister, Kawthar, is in hiding but soon found and arrested. All this leaves their mother alone but not weak, for she believes in the fight for the national cause (also in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Resistance and Revolution).
- Fāḍīl al-ʿAzzāwī (1940-, Iraq) – al-Qalʿa al-Khāmisa (‘The fifth fortress’, 1969) and Ākhir al-Malāʾik (1992, English trans. The Last of the Angels, 2007). The hero of this first novel works in Kirkuk but travels to Baghdad for his vacation. There he is arrested and imprisoned along with other communists. Ākhir al-Malāʾik, set in Kirkuk just before the overthrow of the monarchy, focuses on Ḥamīd Naylūn, a former chauffeur who became a political radical activist.
- Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Farmān (1927 – 1995, Iraq) – Khamsat Aṣwāt (‘Five voices’, 1967) and al-Mukhāṣ (‘Labor’, 1973). Khamsat Aṣwāt uses five narrators to portray Baghdad’s society before the 1958 revolution, and to show the many tensions faced by the intelligentsia during that period (reference) (also in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Communism and Marxism). al-Mukhāṣ takes place a year and a half after the July 14 revolution and depicts the internal strife between yesterday’s allies.
- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Majīd al-Rubayʿī (1939 – 2023, Iraq) – al-Washm (‘The tattoo’, 1972). This novel reflects on the political struggle and the confusion after the revolution of General Qāsim. Its main character, Karīm al-Nāṣirī, feels guilty after being imprisoned and giving in to the authorities after being tortured. He punishes himself by going into exile (reference).
- Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr (1927 – 2006, Iraq) – Ghaḍab al-Madīnah (‘Ire of the city’, 1961) accentuates the physical environments and social arrangements that gave rise to the societal problems under consideration in this period.
- Fuʿād al-Takarlī (1927 – 2008, Iraq) – al-Rajʿ al-Baʿīd (1980, English trans. The Long Way Back, 2001). This novel is a panorama of Baghdadi bourgeois society in the last months of ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim’s regime, as shown through three generations of a family living together in a house in the old quarter of Bāb al-Sharqī. The book relates, from different viewpoints, the events and emotions of the protagonists who take part in the political struggles between communist and nationalist forces in the aftermath of the 1958 coup (reference) (also in F: Children and Family Life: Genealogies and inter-generational stories and Police novels, Thrillers and Crimes: Rape and Sexual Abuse).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Yaseem Hanoosh. 2012. “Contempt: State Literati vs. Street Literati in Modern Iraq.” JAL 43: 372-408, p. 380
- Ikram Masmoudi. 2015. War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, p. 9, 10
- Ali al-Raʿi. 1992. “Arabic Drama since the thirties.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 358-404, p. 394-5
- Roger Allen. 1992. “The Mature Arabic Novel Outside Egypt.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 193-223, p. 217
- EAL, p. 755