- Dayzī al-Amīr’s (1935 – 2018, Iraq) collection of shortstories ʿAlā Lāʾiḥat al-Intiẓār (‘On the waiting list’, 1988) reflects on the writer’s experience on the Iran-Iraqi war (reference).
- Ismāʿīl Fahd Ismāʿīl (1940 – 2018, Kuwait) – al-Sabīlīyāt (2015, English trans. The Old Woman and the River, 2019). This novel explores the history of a piece of green artery in a vast wasteland in Iraq following the Iran-Iraq war. The piece of land was blocked by Iraqi forces from receiving water from the Shatt al-Arab River, drying up all the vegetation except for an area called ‘al-Sabīlīyāt’. There, a 55-year-old woman, Umm Qāsim, suffocating by the devastation around her, took care of all the green and planted new flowers wherever they are destroyed by the conflict (reference) (also in N: Nature: Drought).
- Batūl Khuḍaryī (1965-, Iraq) – Kam Badat al-Samāʾ Qarībah (1999, English trans. A Sky So Close, 2001). This novel is about an unnamed 6-year-old girl from an Iraqi father and English mother, who moves to Baghdad just as the Iran – Iraq war begins (reference). She becomes obsessed with ballet and falls in love with a Christian Iraqi soldier. However, when her mother is dying, she must return to London to take care of her. The novel reflects on the identity the young girl carries, being both English and Iraqi, in the context of a clash between East and West, as well as the developments of the escalating war and the Iraqi society in the 1980s (reference) (also in F: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: War and devastation through children’s eyes).
- Dāwūd al-Shuwaylī (?, Iraq) – Abābīl (‘Flocks’, 1988). The novel follows an Iraqi pilot on his mission over Iranian territory from its preparations to their flying in formation, always respectful of the hierarchy by ranks. The narrating pilot, Yāsīn, is hit after the planes trop their payloads and go back. He refuses to risk being taken prisoner and being raped or dying on enemy land and so he steers back home but his plane goes done. His last words are: ‘God is Great’.
- Luṭfiyya al-Dulaymī’s (1939-, Iraq) two novels Badhūr al-Nār (‘Seeds of Fire’, 1987) and Man Yarith al-Janna? (‘Who Will Inherit Paradise’, 1988). The first of these two describes a year in the life of two couples against the backdrop of the war. The women are artists on the home-front in Baghdad, as is one of the men who is a war-booty hunter. The other man is a poet working in the desert, far from the war, but his experiences are described in terms that recall the war front (reference).
- Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr (1927 – 2006, Iraq) – Ṣurākh al-Nawāris (‘The cry of the seagulls’, 1997) and Bayt ʿalā Nahr Dijla (‘A house on the Tigris’, 2006). Both these novels were written in the 1990s and portray the human suffering caused by the war and soldier’s homecoming (reference).
- Jinān Jāsim Ḥillāwī (1956-, Iraq) – Layl al-Bilād (‘The country’s long night’, 2002). This novel is a write up of the Iran-Iraq war narrative after the war (reference). It focuses on ʿAballah who is led by force to the front and returns as a madman to his destroyed home city Basra. The novel also depicts the Kurdish resistance in the north of the country and fictionally documents the armed rebels’ challenge to Saddam Hussein’s regime (reference) (also in M: Minorities: Kurds).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- EAL, p. 87
- ʿAlī Ḥassan al- Fawwāz. 2016. “‘al-Sabīliyāt’ Sīrah Imrʾah Taḥlim bi-Zawj Ghāʾib fī al-Ḥarb” www.a;arab.co.uk, 7 December 2016, https://alarab.co.uk/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A3%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%85-%D8%A8%D8%B2%D9%88%D8%AC-%D8%BA%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%A8-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A8 (last accessed 14 November 2021)
- Michael Maiello. 2001. “A Sky So Close by Betool Khedairi.” www.nytimes.com, 12 August 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/books/books-in-brief-fiction-525910.html (last accessed 17 May 2023)
- Maysūn Jaʿamūr. 2021. “Ṣirāʿa al-Gharb wa al-Sharq fī Riwāyah ‘Kam Badat al-Samāʾ Qarībah’.” www.magazine.imn.iq, 15 June 2021, https://magazine.imn.iq/ثقافية/صراع-الغرب-والشرق-في-رواية-كم-بدت-السم/ (last accessed 17 May 2023)
- Ikram Masmoudi. 2015. War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, p. 13
- Amir Moosavi. 2015. “How to Write Death: Re-signifying Martyrdom in Two Novels of the Iran Iraq War.” AJCP 35: 9-31