Item Details
Skip Navigation Links
   ActiveUsers:1862Hits:21003078Skip Navigation Links
Show My Basket
Contact Us
IDSA Web Site
Ask Us
Today's News
HelpExpand Help
Advanced search

In Basket
  Journal Article   Journal Article
 

ID179790
Title ProperSinan Antoon’s Fihris
Other Title Informationan index of two minds seeking one nation
LanguageENG
AuthorElimelekh, Geula
Summary / Abstract (Note)American-Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon’s latest Arabic-language novel Fihris (2016), meaning ‘index’ or ‘catalogue’, is ostensibly the story of an academic, Namir, who returns to Baghdad as a translator for a documentary film company and Wadoud, an eccentric Baghdadi bookseller who is devoting his life to compiling a massive, unabridged history of Iraq’s 2003 war. Namir’s encounter with Wadoud in his shop leads to a representation of the Iraq’s macrocosmic polarities at every level. The leitmotifs of unending internal and external conflicting dualities amid the all-pervading insanity of war, violence and brutality form the backbone of a plotless story, whose language, style and structure is founded on themes of exile, memory, madness, time and trauma. This critique seeks to deconstruct the author’s creative tapestry of the two protagonists, their parallel worlds and their ultimate unification as one surreal spirit pointing to new hope for Iraq’s postwar future as one nation.
`In' analytical NoteBritish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 48, No.2; May 2021: p.196-214
Journal SourceBritish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Vol: 48 No 2
Key WordsSinan Antoon’s Fihris ;  American-Iraqi Writer


 
 
Media / Other Links  Full Text