{"id":10144,"date":"2013-03-22T08:48:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T12:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=10144"},"modified":"2013-03-21T08:49:09","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T12:49:09","slug":"iraqi-authors-on-a-decade-of-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/iraqi-authors-on-a-decade-of-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi Authors on \u2018A Decade of Despair\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via & thanks to the as always excellent blog Arab Literature (in English):<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Posted on\u00a0March 21, 2013<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0mlynxqualey<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Leave a comment<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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This is the month, the week, the fifteen minutes that the world is grappling with and reflecting on the US-led invasion of Iraq. But it\u2019s been more than fifteen minutes for Iraqi authors; particularly those, like Ahmed Saadawi, who are still in Iraq:<\/em><\/p>\n

Ahmed Saadawi:\u00a0A Decade of Despair<\/a>\u00a0(New York Times)<\/p>\n

\"SDC11982\"<\/a>Saadawi,\u00a0a Beirut39 laureate<\/a>, writes movingly on why he stays in Iraq and how to understand this war. \u201cWhat did the United States gain from spending more than $2 trillion on its war? If it had really been for oil, then why does it seem that China will profit more from developing Iraq\u2019s lucrative oil contracts?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe power goes out, and everything around me switches off, except for the stream of endless questions.\u201d (Trans.\u00a0Ghenwa Hayek.)<\/p>\n

Saadawi has published a volume of poetry,\u00a0Anniversary of Bad Songs<\/em>\u00a0(2000) and two novels,The Beautiful Country<\/em>\u00a0(2004) and\u00a0Indeed He Dreams or Plays or Dies<\/em>\u00a0(2008). He was also part of the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction Nadwa. An excerpt of\u00a0Frankenstein in Baghdad\u00a0<\/i>appeared in the\u00a0Beirut39\u00a0<\/em>collection and in\u00a0Banipal37.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hassan Blassim:\u00a0leave Iraq to its freedom<\/a>\u00a0(New Internationalist)<\/p>\n

Blasim, a short-story writer, filmmaker, and playwright, has a new collection out in English (trans. Jonathan Wright),\u00a0The Iraqi Christ.\u00a0<\/em>He said:
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\"hb\"<\/a>\u201cPlease help us and ask your government to leave us alone to our freedom and our democracy. We must build the country. Through history we\u2019ve always had these people \u2013 all the time we want to change our culture and make a revolution from inside, and all the time there\u2019s a problem because we are not alone. We fight not just the dictator or some radical Muslim. The West is playing with our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year I want to come to Britain, but it\u2019s so difficult because I am Iraqi and I need a visa. But now I have an invitation, I have my book. A British soldier, on the other hand, can go to Iraq without a visa, without an invitation and then kill people and leave. So what I say is, let us do our own democracy. Of course, it\u2019s not going to be the same, it won\u2019t be a copy of the democracy in Britain or the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahmoud Saeed:\u00a0Local novelist says Iraq war hardened sectarian rifts in Chicago<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ms\"<\/a>Saeed, a novelist who wrote the celebrated\u00a0Saddam City,\u00a0<\/i>among many others, talks about the Iraqis who are living in the US: \u201cIn Iraq, especially before 2003, even if you are from another sect you can make relations, you can make a friendship. The Shia people married the Sunni sect. The Sunni married Shia. Even there is some marriages between Christians and Muslims. But this, here, you cannot find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunya Mikhail: On NPR<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re in the US, Mikhail has an interview with Renee Montagne that will be aired today on\u00a0NPR\u2019s Morning Edition<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via & thanks to the as always excellent blog Arab Literature (in English): Posted on\u00a0March 21, 2013\u00a0by\u00a0mlynxqualey\u00a0|\u00a0Leave a comment This is the month, the week, the fifteen minutes that the world is grappling with...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-books","category-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10147,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10144\/revisions\/10147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}