Novel
النخلة والجيران
Not translated into English
Ghaib Tu'ma Farman · 1966
Synopsis
In Baghdad, in the last years of the Second World War, under the British presence, the novel follows the poor inhabitants of a working-class quarter. At its centre stands Salima, the baker, who lives with Hussein, her husband's son, near the old barren palm tree in her courtyard, to which the novel compares her. Around them revolve neighbours and profiteers, such as Mustafa, who promises her a fortune and covets her money.
Context
The novel appeared in 1966, while the author was living in Moscow. It gives a voice to marginal and illiterate characters, in the Arabic of the street, and Arab critics see in it the true beginning of the Iraqi novel, while it remains little studied elsewhere. Staged in Baghdad in 1969, it was adapted as a television series in 2010. No French or English translation has appeared.
Who it is for
To discover the working-class Baghdad of the forties, with its voices and its speech, in a founding novel.
Prizes and reception
Chosen by the Arab Writers Union, in a list published in 2001, among the hundred best Arabic novels of the twentieth century.