Books Written by Muhsin Al-Ramli

Books Written by Muhsin Al-Ramli

Muhsin Al-Ramli

https://riyadhrb.com/book-author/muhsin-al-ramli/

Muhsin Al-Ramli, an accomplished Iraqi writer, poet, academic, and translator, was born on March 7, 1967, in the village of Sudara in northern Iraq. Since 1995. He has been residing in Madrid, Spain, where he made significant contributions to the field of literature, both as a writer and a translator. He is notably recognized for his translation of the iconic Spanish classic “Don Quixote” into Arabic, demonstrating his profound expertise in languages and literature.

Muhsin Al-Ramli’s academic journey marked by his profound interest in the intersection of cultures. In 2003, he completed his Doctorate in Philosophy and Letters and Spanish Philology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, focusing his thesis on the influences of Islamic culture in “Don Quixote.” This scholarly work showcases his deep engagement with cross-cultural studies and his dedication to exploring the connections between diverse literary traditions.

As an educator, Al-Ramli imparts his knowledge and passion for literature at the Saint Louis University Madrid Campus. He is also a pivotal figure in Arabic literary circles, serving as the editor of Alwah, a magazine dedicated to Arabic literature and thought, which he co-founded. This platform reflects his commitment to promoting Arabic literature and fostering intellectual discourse.

Al-Ramli’s literary contributions encompass a wide array of genres, including novels, short stories, poetry, and theatrical works.

Muhsin Al-Ramli’s Works:

• “Gift from the Century to Come” (Short stories, 1995)
• “In Search of a Live Heart” (Theater, 1997)
• “Papers far from the Tigris” (Short stories, 1998)
• “Scattered Crumbs” (Novel, 2000)
• “The Happy Nights of the Bombing” (Narrative, 2003)
• “We Are All Widowers of the Answers” (Poetry, 2005)
• “Dates on My Fingers” (Novel, 2008)
• “Asleep among the Soldiers” (Poetry, 2011)
• “The Oranges Of Baghdad and Chinese Love” (Short stories, 2011)
• “The President’s Gardens” (Novel, 2012), which was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF)
• “The Wolf of Love and Books” (Novel, 2015)
• “Children and Shoes” (Novel, 2018)
• “Daughter of the Tigris” (Novel, 2019)

Additionally, he has contributed to the world of translation, notably with the Portuguese translation of “Laranjas e giletes em Bagdá/Naranjas y cuchillas en Bagdad” by Fedra Rodríguez Hinojosa. His diverse body of work reflects a deep engagement with themes of cultural identity, history, and the human condition, making him a prominent voice in contemporary Arabic literature.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

 

The President’s Gardens

https://riyadhrb.com/book/the-presidents-gardens/

“The President’s Gardens” by Muhsin Al-Ramli is a sweeping and profound narrative set in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, encompassing the tumultuous period from the Iran-Iraq War through to the aftermath of the American invasion. This epic tale intricately weaves the lives of three friends, each uniquely impacted by the wars and the oppressive regime they live under.

Abdullah, one of the central characters, endures two decades of captivity in Iran. Upon his return, confronted with a shattering revelation about his origins. Tariq, another protagonist, is the offspring of a local Sheikh. He skillfully evades military service, instead ascending the ladder of power and influence. While he offers aid to his friends, Tariq’s actions are predominantly guided by self-interest, revealing the complex interplay of loyalty and personal ambition in times of conflict.

Ibrahim, the third key figure, suffers a personal loss of a different nature. He loses a foot during the first Gulf War and his wife to the ravages of cancer. His life takes an unexpected turn when he secures a seemingly humble job in the gardens of one of the president’s palaces. However, this role soon expands in scope and responsibility, leading him down a path he could never have imagined.

Al-Ramli’s novel is rich with a diverse and vividly portrayed ensemble of characters. Their interwoven stories echo the narrative style and thematic depth found in acclaimed works such as “The Kite Runner,” “The Yellow Birds,” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” “The President’s Gardens” is not just a story about war and its aftermath; it delves deeply into themes of oppression, love, marriage, familial bonds, and the human condition under a brutal, dictatorial regime.

Spanning over 400 pages, the novel is both an epic historical account and a philosophical exploration, offering profound insights into the complexities of life during a period of extreme turmoil. Al-Ramli’s masterful storytelling captures the essence of human resilience and the enduring spirit in the face of adversity, making “The President’s Gardens” an impactful and enduring work of literature.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

 

Daughter of the Tigris

https://riyadhrb.com/book/daughter-of-the-tigris/

“Daughter of the Tigris” by Muhsin Al-Ramli is a compelling narrative set in the backdrop of a tumultuous period in Iraq, following the critically acclaimed novel “The President’s Gardens.” The story unfolds during the Ramadan in a war-stricken Iraq, a land described metaphorically as ‘without bananas’, symbolizing a place stripped of its simplicity and joy. Amidst this chaos, the protagonist, Qisma, embarks on a poignant journey to Baghdad alongside her soon-to-be husband, with a mission to unearth the remains of her father amidst the countless casualties of a brutal war.

Tariq, Qisma’s fiancé, sees their union as more than just a marriage of convenience. Captivated by Qisma’s beauty and modernity, he yearns for a deeper connection, both physical and emotional. However, Tariq, a sheikh rooted in refined tradition, faces the challenge of harmonizing his life with Qisma, an embodiment of contemporary Iraqi womanhood.

Set against the backdrop of political turmoil following the overthrow of the President, Iraq transforms into a battleground for power-hungry leaders, each vying to claim the vacant throne. Amidst this power struggle, Qisma is engulfed by fear – fear for her son’s safety and the looming threat of her father’s killers seeking vengeance. Her story is a vivid portrayal of the relentless struggle for survival in a country ravaged by conflict.

Qisma’s narrative is not just one of survival but also of ambition. Her aspirations to carve out a piece of Iraq for herself depict the human tendency to seek control in times of uncertainty. However, this ambition, likened to a perilous drug, could potentially lead to her undoing. “Daughter of the Tigris” is a tale of resilience, fear, and the consequences of ambition set in a nation scarred by war, where survival is a daily battle, and the quest for power is a double-edged sword.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

 

Dates on My Fingers

https://riyadhrb.com/book/dates-on-my-fingers/

“Dates on My Fingers,” a novel by Muhsin Al-Ramli, intricately weaves the narrative of Saleem. He is a young man from an Iraqi village who embarks on a transformative journey to Spain. Seeking refuge from the violence and rigid societal norms of his homeland. Saleem’s quest for a peaceful life is abruptly interrupted when he unexpectedly encounters his father, Noah, in a Madrid nightclub. Noah’s presence, markedly different in demeanor and appearance, ignites Saleem’s curiosity. Prompting him to unravel the mysteries surrounding his father’s new life in Spain.

The novel deftly transitions between Saleem’s present in Spain and his past in Iraq. Illuminating his deeply personal experiences of familial love amidst the backdrop of war. A particularly poignant memory is the haunting accidental death of his cousin Aliya, with whom Saleem shared tentative steps towards understanding sexuality. These reflections are not only personal reckonings but also a window into the broader societal challenges faced in Iraq.

Saleem’s journey is marked by a tumultuous reconnection with his father. Leading to a violent confrontation that compels him to reassess his identity and the delicate balance of his newfound stability. Al-Ramli’s narrative skillfully carries the reader between the contrasting worlds of Spain and Iraq. Culminating in a surprising and thought-provoking resolution.

Critically acclaimed, “Dates on My Fingers” offers a vivid portrayal of an Iraq under oppression, transforming recent historical events into universal stories that allow readers to draw their own conclusions and parallels. This fast-paced novel transcends geographical boundaries, delving into themes of youthful love, the aftermath of conflict, and the enduring significance of family honor.

Muhsin Al-Ramli, an Iraqi-born novelist, poet, translator, and academic, writes in both Arabic and Spanish. Exiled in 1993 due to governmental persecution, which included the execution of his brother, Al-Ramli has made Madrid his home. He is a professor at Saint Louis University and has translated several Spanish classics into Arabic. His literary works include plays, poetry, short stories, and novels, with “Dates on My Fingers” being longlisted for the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The English translation of this novel by Luke Leafgren, who learned Arabic during his PhD studies at Harvard University, is his first foray into translation, bringing Al-Ramli’s rich narrative to a broader audience.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

 

Scattered Crumbs

https://riyadhrb.com/book/scattered-crumbs/

“Scattered Crumbs,” authored by Muhsin Al-Ramli, is a poignant narrative set amidst the Iran-Iraq war in an Iraqi village. The novel critiques life under oppressive rule, exploring the impact of dictatorship and war on an Iraqi family. Al-Ramli vividly portrays conflicts intensified by political turmoil through this impoverished peasant family’s lens.

Central to the story is a father, an ardent admirer of Saddam Hussein, known as “The Leader.” His fervent support for the dictatorship starkly contrasts with his son’s, an artist. The son’s love for his homeland is palpable, yet he faces a moral and artistic quandary. He cannot bring himself to paint the Leader’s portrait, as demanded by his father. The ideological clash mirrors broader societal conflicts, symbolizing generational and intellectual rifts exacerbated by the regime.

A Tale of Identity, Exile, and Suffering in 1980s Iraq Amidst Dictatorship and Conflict

The narrator, another crucial character, recounts the gradual disintegration of his family. Departing in search of his cousin, he reflects on the scant knowledge defined by his cousin’s absence. This journey symbolizes a broader search for identity and belonging amidst the chaos of war and dictatorship.

“Scattered Crumbs,” originally published in Arabic in Cairo in 2000, has been masterfully translated to convey the original text’s subtle sarcasm and elliptical rhythms. Translator Yasir Suleiman brings to the fore the novel’s nuanced exploration of the deterioration of both the country and its people, who are swept into the maelstrom of political and social upheaval.

Al-Ramli’s narrative depicts exile’s harsh realities, driven by explosive forces. The pain mirrors skin flaying for those trampled in their homeland. The novel stitches memories – Azawi’s café, Basra’s winged bull. Older generations cling, while younger ones, overwhelmed, seek refuge in succinct expressions. “Scattered Crumbs,” set in 1980s Iraq, reflects profound suffering during dictatorship and conflict.