Six books that put you in Iraq. Three are by writers from Iraq and set there, starting with Frankenstein in Baghdad and The Corpse Washer. The other three are wider picks: books by long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest surviving works of literature, was composed in ancient Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. It was written down on clay tablets in Sumerian and Akkadian. Baghdad, founded in the eighth century, became a centre of learning under the Abbasid caliphs, and Arabic poetry and prose flourished there. Arabic is the main language of modern Iraqi fiction, though Kurdish is also written in the country.
Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad is a darkly comic, surreal novel set in 2005. Sinan Antoon's The Corpse Washer centres on a Shia family of corpse washers in Baghdad. Shahad Al Rawi's The Baghdad Clock tells of a girl's childhood in an air-raid shelter during the 1990s. Nuha al-Radi's Baghdad Diaries is an artist's diary of the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions years.
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A darkly comic, surreal novel of Baghdad in 2005, where sectarian violence and occupation-era fear shape ordinary neighbourhood life.
Follows a Shia family of corpse washers in Baghdad through war, sanctions and sectarian killing, rooted in the city's rituals and streets.
A girl's childhood in a Baghdad air-raid shelter during the 1990s Gulf War and sanctions, told through neighbourhood characters.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Iraq.
Portrays the reed-house villages, buffalo herding and canoe life of the southern Iraqi marshes before they were drained.
An Iraqi artist's diary of daily life in Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions years.
A noir novel of occupied Baghdad in 2003, following a former Iraqi police investigator through its streets and politics.
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