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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
This article is a part of an attempt to show how the Iraqi novel depicts the main sectarian and ethnic groups in Iraq. Concentrating on Iraqi novels in Arabic, written mainly by Arab writers, I will examine the attitude of intellectuals to the Kurds as well as the role accorded to Kurds in the narratives of contemporary Iraqi novels.
Benedict Anderson was one of the first scholars to speak about the role of the novel in creating and spreading a national identity. This is done through a creation of an “imagined community” with shared notions of time and space. The Iraqi novel was and still is committed to this idea and most Iraqi (Arab) novelists were partisans of an Iraqi nationalism that strongly supports the integrity of the country within its current borders and envisions a nationalism that contains all of Iraq’s communities.
1 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1994).Google Scholar
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17 See also Zeidel, Ronen, The Shia in Iraqi Novels, forthcoming.Google Scholar
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27 al-Raseef, Jassim, Ru’us al-Huriyya al-Mukayasa.Google Scholar
28 Zangane, Hayfaa, Nisaa ‘ala Safr (London: Dar al-Hikma, 2001)Google Scholar. Born in Baghdad, Zangane defines herself as an Iraqi and thus should not be defined as a Kurd writing in Arabic.
29 Halawi, Jinan Jassim, Amakin Hara (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 2006).Google Scholar
30 Halawi, Jinan Jassim, Layl al-Bilad.Google Scholar
31 al-Hamrani, Muhammad, Hijab al-’Arus (Damascus: al-Mada, 2008), p. 114.Google Scholar
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33 On the Faylis under the Ba’th, see Eskander, Saad B.,”The Fayli Kurds of Baghdad and the Ba’ath Regime,” in Jabar, Faleh A. and Dawod, Hosham, The Kurds: Nationalism and Politics (London: Saqi, 2006), pp. 180–203.Google Scholar
34 al-Sa’dawi, Ahmad, Inahu Yahlam au Yarqas au Yamut (Damascus: al-Mada, 2008).Google Scholar
35 al-’Iqabi, Hamid, Al-Dil’; (Cologne: al-Jamal, 2006), p. 169.Google Scholar
36 Ibid, p. 172.
37 Ibid, pp. 178–179.
38 Ibid, p. 194.
39 Ibid, p. 188.
40 For a good introduction to the Kurdish novel, read Hashem Ahmadzadeh, Nation and Novel: A Study of Persian and Kurdish Narrative Discourse (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis, 2003). This book is more concerned with a comparison between the Kurdish novel and the Persian novel, but some of its conclusions are applicable to the Iraqi context. Such is the dissimilarity between a state-based and a state-oriented novel—the Arab novel in Iraq—and the stateless and nation-oriented Kurdish novel. According to Ahmadzadeh, the Kurdish novel is a recent phenomenon, dating from the last decades of the twentieth century. The most famous Kurdish writer who writes in Arabic is Salim Barakat from Syria. Since he is not an Iraqi, I will not discuss his novels here.
41 al-Ayubi, Azad, Efin wa Intuthar al-Fajr (‘Amman: al-Ahliyya, 2004).Google Scholar
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43 ‘Abud, Salam, Man Yasna’, p. 341.Google Scholar
44 Zeidel, Ronen, “The Iraqi Novel and the Shia,” Die Welt des Islams, forthcoming.Google Scholar
45 ‘Abud, Salam, Man Yasna’, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar