Muḥammad Khuḍayyir from Saddam Hussein to the gardens of the south : writing the self in postcolonial Basra
Abstract
In 2001 Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to write novels inspired by the First Gulf War. Muḥammad Khuḍayyir (b. 1942) responded to the presidential invitation by writing Kurrāsat Kānūn (2001, the Winter Sketchbook), a text that is neither a conventional novel, nor a celebration of Saddam's war. Khuḍayyir calls this new type of text an “assembling text.” Kurrāsat Kānūn and the author's next “assembling text” represent an innovative mode of writing which is an alternative to both mainstream conventional fiction and the recent experimentations of Arab writers. A reading of both texts that places Khuḍayyir within the contexts of various literary fields shows how his works express a vision of world literature from the perspective of a contemporary Arab writer who escapes both the threatening reality of post-independence regimes and the Eurocentric tendencies of postcolonial theory.
Citation
Caiani , F & Cobham , C M 2020 , ' Muḥammad Khuḍayyir from Saddam Hussein to the gardens of the south : writing the self in postcolonial Basra ' , Middle Eastern Literatures , vol. 22 , no. 1 , pp. 1-22 . https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2019.1742447
Publication
Middle Eastern Literatures
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1475-262XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2019.1742447
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