Top 10 List of Iraqi Fiction/ The Markaz

 

here are 10 books that will help further explore the diversity of Iraqi literature available in English right now.

The President’s Gardens by Muhsin Al-Ramli,

translated by Luke Leafgren

 (MacLehose Press, 2017) 

Set during the last fifty years of Iraqi history, this novel begins with a horrific morning. It is the third day of Ramadan and the village without bananas wakes up to find nine banana crates stacked by the bus stop, each with the severed head of one of its sons. One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated. The novel explores what it is that warrants such a gruesome ending. Described by Hassan Blasim, Iraqi author of The Iraqi Christ as “a contemporary tragedy of epic proportions,” the novel is masterfully woven from the miserable stories of the real people of Iraq, while highlighting resounding and universal concerns. Think One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner.

When the novel appeared in English in 2017, it was acclaimed by all critics and went on to win the 2018 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. The translation of its sequel, Daughter of the Tigris (2019) was practically published at the same time as publication of the Arabic.

https://themarkaz.org/reading-iraq-our-top-10-list-of-iraqi-fiction/

من عشرة كتب ستساعد في استكشاف تنوع الأدب العراقي المتوفر باللغة الإنجليزية في الوقت الحالي.

حدائق الرئيس لمحسن الرملي

ترجمة لوك ليفغرين  (MacLehose Press, 2017)

تدور أحداث هذه الرواية خلال الخمسين عامًا الأخيرة من التاريخ العراقي، تبدأ بصباح مُرِّوع؛ اليوم الثالث من شهر رمضان حين تستيقظ القرية الخالية من الموز لتجد تسعة صناديق موز مكدسة بجوار محطة الحافلات، ومع كل منها رأس مقطوع لأحد أبناء القرية. كان أحدهم ينتمي إلى أحد أكثر الرجال المطلوبين في العراق، المعروف لدى أصدقائه باسم "إبراهيم قسمة". تستكشف الرواية ما يبرر مثل هذه النهاية البشعة. وصف الرواية حسن بلاسم مؤلف كتاب "المسيح العراقي" بأنها: "مأساة معاصرة ذات أبعاد ملحمية"، الرواية منسوجة ببراعة من القصص البائسة للشعب العراقي الحقيقي، سلطت الضوء على الاهتمامات الهائلة والعالمية. تبدو الرواية وكأنها مائة عام من العزلة وقد دُمجت برواية عداء الطائرة الورقية. عندما نُشرت الرواية باللغة الإنجليزية في العام 2017، نالت استحسان جميع النقاد وفازت بجائزة سيف غباش بانيبال للترجمة الأدبية العربية للعام 2018. نُشرت ترجمة الجزء الثاني: بنت دجلة (2019) عمليًا في نفس وقت نشر اللغة العربية.

https://themarkaz.org/ar/reading-iraq-our-top-10-list-of-iraqi-fiction/

Review: Dates on My Fingers. By: Azeez Jasim

 A Book Review:

 Is it ‘Dates on My Fingers’?

 

By: Azeez Jasim Mohammed

Novel title: “Dates on My Fingers”
Author: Muhsin Al-Ramli
Language: Arabic
Publisher: Al Mada House for publishing
Pages: 173

“Dates on My Fingers” is a novel of moral values that advises readers not to spend time thinking of a plan that reaps nothing finally. The novel focuses on the discrepancy between achieving one’s ends after consuming long time by harnessing all self-abilities and the quality of the results that one reaches afterwards. It gives a lesson that not all enjoyable actions leave good impression after they are over.

Noh, an obedient son of a Shaikh who belongs to a tribe of a huge number of his own people, is changed suddenly into a man who lost his temper and starts behaving savagely. The change in his personality frightened psychologists as his sudden transformation into a whimsical man proves how people can change easily to this extent. Noh spends most of the remaining of his life seeking revenge; not for the sake of ecstasy but for regain rectitude that he lost when his ill daughter is harassed, in his presence, by a son of an influential man. He does not know that he is going to be fatigued by the psychological thinking of revenge which will put an end to his clannish, social and moral pertinence. In the same way that Hamlet does when he abnegates the luxurious and royal life he lives just to make himself convinced whether his mother and his uncle are betrayals when they lead such a harmful conspiracy against his father or not, the inner conflict that leads to his fate.

The context of the story shows the reader that the more time you take to achieve your end, the more disastrous results will be not only on your shoulders but also on those whom you like as well. His reaction to get revenge, which is supported by his relatives, burdens him insofar as burdening them all and it becomes a boring mission though it still sounds interesting to him. The loss that Noh faces, so to speak, is not only ideological, but it is a loss of an individual’s own social entity. This is because the decision of counterattacking, as a reaction to revenge, is a conduct of challenging a state, and it comes to be thought politically as making a rift in the entity of the state itself. No one cares about Noh’s feeling as a father who is insulted in public and in his daughter’s presence. Noh spends his life respecting others in the same way that he expects respect from others and that’s perhaps why he expects more from those who find him doing nothing rather than destruction.

From a rural character into a dude one, from a man of social commitments into an apathetic man, and from obedient into indocile, Noh is seen changed completely throughout the plot of the story. All his family members are shattered here and there in this world, and he finds himself travelling to different countries, changing his habits and dropping most of his values just to bite a dog in the same way that the dog bites him.

The novel reflects Muhsin Al-Ramli’s bad impression about life in diaspora through his experience of living abroad. The author calls for compromise and he tries to forward a message of hope to those who suffers from consuming their life just for the sake of getting revenge. The concept of this novel is quite clear that if you want to live with peace of mind then think as Dale Carnegie puts it “stop worrying and start living.”

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*Published: Oman Observer. Feb 26,2023

https://www.omanobserver.om/pdf/2023/02/27/omandailyobserver-20230227-1.pdf?ts=221721

https://www.omanobserver.om/ampArticle/1133323

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dates-My-Fingers-Modern-Literature/dp/9774166442

Conflicto Humano en La Novela del iraquí Muhsin Al-Ramli /Hanan Younus

مظاهر الصراع الإنساني في رواية (تمر الأصابع) 

لمحسن الرملي

Las Manifestaciones del Conflicto Humano 

en La Novela "Dedos de Dátiles"

del autor iraquí Muhsin Al-Ramli

حنان يونس محمد

Hanan Younus Mohammed

https://search.mandumah.com/Record/956303

Al-Ramli intenta en sus obras narrativas, y por su sentimiento sensible y la profundidad de su conocimiento, atraer la atención a las cuestiones del hombre en la sociedad y sus problemas que se mezclan con los sufrimientos, donde escribe sobre el hombre y sus sufrimientos y sus preocupaciones en un mundo amenazado por las gravedades. Él nos ofrece todo esto en un estilo narrativo, un simple lenguaje y unas acciones de la realidad a través de los personajes, el tiempo y el lugar. También, en algunas veces el diálogo y la descripción ocupan un gran papel en la obra según la necesidad del texto. El objeto del estudio es establecer una búsqueda en el conflicto humano, y cómo parece con los personajes dentro la sociedad de "Dedos de Dátiles", además de sus reflexiones a ellos. Cuando el lector lee esta novela en primera vez, observa que el hombre vive entre el pasado y el presente, entre la tradición y la modernidad, y por eso la investigadora va a seguir aquel conflicto humano y sus manifestaciones. Los personajes en la obra son prisioneros del sufrimiento y la tensión, pero, al mismo tiempo buscan la salvación de todas las causas del sufrimiento: la violencia, las guerras, la injusticia, la autoridad paternal-religiosa y además de la del gobierno.

 

In his novel writings, with his delicate sense and depth of vision, Al-Ramli tried to draw attention to human issues in society and their problems to the sufferings. He wrote about man, his suffering and his concern in a world threatened by danger, and all this presented to us in a narrative style and in simple language with one of the most precious realities through people, time and place. Dialogue and description sometimes also play a major part of the work in accordance with the necessity of the text. The study was therefore aimed at examining the human conflict and how it appeared with the characters within a community and the novel “Dates on My Fingers,” as well as its implications on them.
The reader, while reading the novel for the first time, notices that man lives between the past and the present, between tradition and modernity and that's why the researcher will pursue that humanitarian conflict and its phenomena. The characters in the novel “Dates on My Fingers” were prisoners of suffering and anxiety, but at the same time, they were seeking salvation from all causes of suffering: violence, wars, injustice, power, including patriarchal and religious authority, as well as the government authority.
This abstract translated by Dar AlMandumah Inc. 2018

 

حاول الرملي في كتاباته الروائية بإحساسه المرهف وعمق بصيرته أن يجذب الأنظار إلى قضايا الإنسان في المجتمع ومشكلاتها لتيامتز جتب المعاناة، إذ كتب عن الإنسان ومعاناته وهمومه في عالم مهدد بالأخطار، كل هذا قدمه لنا بأسلوب سردي وبلغة بسيطة مع أحد أثمن الواقع من خلال الأشخاص والزمان والمكان، كذلك كان الحوار والوصف في بعض الأحيان يشغلان دورا كبيرا في العمل على وفق ضرورة النص لذا استهدفت الدراسة إلى البحث في الصراع الإنساني وكيف ظهر مع الشخصيات داخل مجتمع وراية "تمر الأصابع"، فضلا عن انعكاساته عليها.
أن القارئ حين يقرأ الرواية لأول مرة يلاحظ أن الإنسان يعيش بين الماضي والحاضر، وبين التقليد والحداثة. ولهذا سوف تتابع الباحثة ذلك الصراع الإنساني ومظاهرة، لقد كانت الشخصيات في "تمر الأصابع" سجناء المعاناة والتوتر، ولكنهم في الوقت نفسه يبحثون عن الخلاص من كل مسببات المعاناة: العنف والحروب والظلم والسلطة ومنها السلطة الأبوية والدينية فضلا عن سلطة الحكومة

https://search.mandumah.com/Record/956303

Literatura iraquí / Elige libro

 

Los jardines del presidente

Es una historia de muerte, amor y amistad

por: Nagore Pérez

eligelibro.com

Podría decir que esta novela me ha sacado de «mi zona de confort lectora» no solo por diferente sino porque impele a la reflexión, me ha enseñado mucho sobre Irak, sobre sus gentes y costumbres y además es bastante entretenida, dentro de la extrema dureza de sus páginas.

El libro es una sucesión de momentos amargos y crudos y no es para menos teniendo en cuenta que recorre la historia de Irak en sus últimos cincuenta años. Cincuenta años repletos de cruentas guerras, empezando por la guerra con Irán, pasando por la guerra del golfo tras la invasión de Kuwait, hasta la invasión de Irak por parte de una alianza de naciones encabezada por Estados Unidos.
La historia se cuenta desde el prisma de tres inseparables amigos de la infancia Tarek, Abdulá Kafka e Ibrahim, criados en un entorno rural en el que viven felices hasta que se van sucediendo los diferentes acontecimientos en sus vidas, intrínsecamente unidos a los acontecimientos del propio país. Uno de ellos sufre las torturas de la república islámica de Irán, otro será mutilado en la guerra de Kuwait… en definitiva los protagonistas sufren en sus carnes los horrores de la guerra y la sinrazón del régimen dictatorial de Sadam Husein.

La novela termina en 2006, tras el derrocamiento de Sadam, y pareciera que al cerrar la última página se cerrara la historia de horror de Irak. Sin embargo, nunca fue así, la calma y la paz no consiguen posarse en Irak, menos ahora que ha aparecido en escena el Estado Islámico y después de acabar con la vida de miles de civiles tiene aterrorizados a los iraquíes (entre otros).

El autor Muhsin Al-Ramli @alramlimuhsin, merece una mención para aquellos que como en mi caso no lo conozcáis. Se trata de uno de los más prestigiosos escritores de Irak, aunque lleva años residiendo en Madrid. Nadie mejor que él, exiliado del país y perseguido por el régimen puede apuntalar la historia que cuenta. Su hermano, Hassan Mutlak (el conocido como Lorca Iraquí) fue ahorcado por el régimen de Sadam en 1990.

Es una historia difícil, pero merece la pena leerla, no es solo una historia de muerte, es sobre todo una historia de amor y de amistad.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ClB-QYmtqS4/?hl=es

https://www.alianzaeditorial.es/libro/alianza-literaria-al/los-jardines-del-presidente-muhsin-al-ramli-9788491812760/

Iraqi Book Club/ The President's Gardens: Muhsin Al-Ramli

 

Iraqi Book Club

 The President's Gardens : Muhsin Al-Ramli

Together, we share our stories about Iraq and meet new people in a supportive environment. We do this by talking about books.

About this event

We are a community group of people who have a relationship with Iraq. Some of us were born there, some of our parents were born there, some have lived and worked there and some are just curious.

Together, we aim to share our stories about Iraq and meet new people in a supportive environment. We do this by talking about books.

We talk about books written by Iraqi authors, both non-fiction and fiction. We like to read traditionally minority voices, like those of women, religious minorities and people who are queer. We do this so we can get the full picture of what it means to live in 🇮🇶 Iraq.

We meet every other month online to learn and get to know new people. Every so often we have a get-together in person somewhere in the UK. All sessions are appropriate for anyone with an open mind and heart, of any ethnicity and background!

____ 

BOOK OF THE MONTH | The President's Gardens - Muhsin Al-Ramli

On the third day of Ramadan, a small village in Iraq wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop.

One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated. How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?

The answer lies behind the locked gates of The President's gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.

Join us to chat about our responses to these writings and (if we have them our own dreams for the future of Iraq

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/iraqi-book-club-the-presidents-gardens-muhsin-al-ramli-tickets-399470154987

Entrevista, Muhsin Al-Ramli, Radio Casa Bukowski

 

حوار مع #محسن_الرملي بالإسبانية 

في راديو دار بوكوفسكي

Entrevista con Muhsin Al-Ramli, 

en Radio Casa Bukowski,

 el programa DESDE EL OTRO LADO DEL MAR!

Por: Cristina Penalva

https://radiobukowski.org/desde-el-otro-lado-del-mar/desde-el-otro-lado-del-mar-episodio-38-muhsin-al-ramli-narrador-poeta-ensayista-traductor-guionista-y-dramaturgo/

#Poesia #Bukowski #MuhsinAlRamli

 

Islamic Azad University of Kermanshah

Faculty of Literature and Humanities

Thesis for obtaining a master's degree

Arabic literature

 النقد الثقافي في روايات محسن الرملي

Title:

Cultural Criticism in Muhsin Al-Ramli's Novels

Writer:

Mohammed Majid Ebraheem Alkhazali

 

Supervisor:

Dr. Jafar Firoozmandi

Cultural criticism is one of the most important literary phenomena that was associated with postmodernism in the field of literature and criticism. This reaction was in response to linguistic structuralism، semiotics، and aesthetic theory، which on the one hand relates to literature as a formal linguistic phenomenon.، Or an artistic and aesthetic phenomenon on the other hand are all subject to criticism because they are a narrative system that must be exposed to this criticism and cultural criticism deprives the text of its aesthetic and visual content as well as its exaggerations. Extremely formal excesses، and placing them in the monetary base to achieve the real perspective of the text، and precisely related to the study and study of implicit cultural patterns in its cultural، social، political، historical and religious context، understanding، It is interpreted and analyzed. In this dissertation، we try to focus on cultural criticism in the novels of Dr. (Muhsin Al-Ramli)، Muhsin Al-Ramli، which is the product of the tragedy of a country that is politically، socially and Muhsin Al-Ramli on the tragic consequences of this ruling authority such as dissolution، corruption Corruption is one of the most important causes of these pressures، authoritarianism and unjust authority that led to the destruction of the people. And betrayal of all core values ​​and others has created implicit patterns and apparent problems. These patterns are highlighted in his novels، which were the title of my letter in which I addressed Muhsin Al-Ramli's cultural critique of social and political aspects. And the religious aspect، which did not stop only by criticizing the past، but also continued to criticize the present. It is an era of occupation that also showed negative cases، some of which are negative thoughts and cases، some of which are social، some of which are political and some of which are religious، and some of which have tried to destroy the country in the illusion of politics or reforming society. Images that identify the main themes of two different lives belong to one person. One of them was formed based on the events of immigration، the injustice of the authorities and the love for his country، and passion still lives in him.