in La rivista di Arablit, a. XIV, n. 27, giugno 2024, pp. 163-167.

Ronen Zeidel’s Pluralism in the Iraqi Novel After 2003: Literature and the Recovery of National Identity explores the presence of ethno-religious identities in the Iraqi literary output produced during the last two decades. This is an understudied subject in the field of Arabic studies. According to the author, these identities have recently become a prevalent element in Iraq’s cultural production, including literature, where they gave way to “pluralism” and a “new” or, at least, different form of “national identity”1. Indeed, for Zeidel and other scholars, the specific idea of “Iraqiness” promoted by the former regime began to implode after the US invasion of the country and the toppling of Ṣaddām Ḥusayn’s dictatorship (2003). Moreover, ethno-religious identities were reintroduced in the works of many writers who tried to counteract the state propaganda implemented by the Baathist institutions through fiction.

Like much of the academic literature devoted to the Iraqi cultural output, this work has been conceived from a historical perspective or, better, a «quantitative» one [p. 15], to quote the author’s own words2. Ronen Zeidel has been working as a historian on Iraqi fiction throughout his whole career, as shown by his many contributions in this field. In fact, five of the six chapters of the book have already been published in academic journals such as “Die Welt des Islams”, the “Review of Middle East Studies”, the “Journal of Levantine Studies”, “Middle Eastern Studies”, and the “Journal of Modern Jewish Studies”, with the only exception of the second chapter. Each chapter revolves around a specific ethno-religious community, exploring its literary production(s) and representation(s) through examples taken from recent Iraqi novels. The six chapters are preceded by an introduction and are followed by the concluding remarks where the author summarises the book’s content.

The first chapter, The Shīʿa in Iraqi Novels, is entirely devoted to the Shia. It starts with an account of the mainstream narrative around the Sunna-Shia divide produced by the state during the hegemony of the Baathist regime. In this chapter, Zeidel illustrates the «blurring» of ethno-religious identities carried out by writers from previous decades [p. 19]. He sees ʿAzīz al-Sayyid Ǧāsim as the forerunner of a significant change that occurred in the “Shia camp” between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. In addition to this change, the author explores the novels by other writers who adopted Shia motifs to represent Iraqi socio-political reality before 2006. At the end of the chapter, he also discusses some fictional texts written by novelists such as Rasmiyyah Mḥaybas, Šawqī Karīm, Murtaḍà Kzār, Naṣīf Falak, Aḥmad Saʿdāwī or Naǧm Wālī after the Iraqi civil war (2006-2007). These texts led Zeidel to argue for a categorisation of all the novels produced by or about the “Shia” in this phase into five categories: «Shīʿī novels, novels conducting a dialogue between the Shīʿa and another Iraqi community, novels on Shīʿī places, cross sectarian novels and novels researching the causes of the sectarian civil war and sectarian relations» [pp. 35-36].

The second chapter, Sunni and Novels in Iraq, focuses on multiple texts produced by or about the “Sunnis”. It begins with the assumption that «a full-fledged Sunni narrative» appeared in Iraqi literature only after the civil war [p. 55]. It explores the representations of the Sunni community in recent novels by writers with a Shia background or novelists coming from Sunni families, such as Maysalūn Hādī, Ǧāsim al-Raṣīf, Muḥsin al-Ramlī, Šākir al-Anbārī and ʿAbd al-Sattār Nāṣir. These novels are separated from the works of other “Sunnis”, which Zeidel brings together in another paragraph titled The Emergence of a Sunni Narrative in Post-2003 Novels. Here, the author enumerates the characteristics of the «full-fledged Sunni narrative» he mentions in the previous paragraph. According to him, this narrative is generally «written by a Sunni located in a Sunni location», and its «protagonist or protagonists are Sunni» [p. 75]. It could focus on several themes, such as «post-2003 victimhood and marginalization», «the feeling of inferiority in post-2003 Iraq», and «the Shīʿa threat» [p. 76]. Moreover, it would be «mostly non-religious or even secular» and would tend «to belittle, or even totally ignore, Sunni terror in post-2003 Iraq» [pp. 75-76].

The third chapter, The Iraqi Novel and the Kurds, focuses on the representations of the Kurds in recent Iraqi novels by Arab writers. In the first part of the chapter, Zeidel looks at the relations between these two communities from a diachronic perspective. He states that «as a result of the prevailing reality of Kurdish-Arab separation, the Kurds were only rare guests in Iraqi novels before the 1990s» [p. 104]. In its second part, the author analyses some texts to which he refers as anti-Kurdish state-sponsored novels, written by writers such as Ǧāsim al-Raṣīf, Sayf al-Dīn al-Ǧarrāḥ and Ṣaddām Ḥusayn himself; but also other novels that, according to him, show a more complex and nuanced perspective towards the Kurds, such as the works of Ǧinān Ǧāsim al-Ḥillāwī, Šākir al-Anbārī, Šākir Nūrī, Hayfāʾ Zankanah, Ḥamīd al-ʿIqābī and Ḥawrāʾ al-Nadāwī. Very little space, instead, is left for novels written in Arabic by writers with a Kurdish background.

The fourth chapter, The Iraqi Novel and the Christians of Iraq, deals with Christian ethno-religious communities. After a short introduction, the chapter discusses a debate between two Muslim intellectuals in order to show the spectrum of opinions existing about them. Moreover, the chapter explores some literary representations contained in recent fictional texts by Nāẓim al-ʿUbaydī, ʿAlī Badr and Aḥmad Saʿdāwī. It compares them with the works of novelists with a Christian background, such as Ṣamūʾil Šamʿūn, Sinān Anṭūn and Inʿām Kaǧahǧī. After this comparison, the chapter ends with the conclusion that Muslims consider Christians to be an essential part of the Iraqi «national fabric» while «Christian writers […] still seek to be accepted by the Muslim Arab Iraqis» [p. 140].

The fifth and sixth chapters, titled Gypsies in the Iraqi Novel and On the Last Jews in Iraq and Iraqi National Identity, are devoted to two of Iraq’s smallest communities. While the first mainly draws on historical data and contains few references to recent Iraqi novels, the chapter on the Jews discusses in greater detail two literary works: ʿAlī Badr’s Ḥāris al-tabġ (The Tobacco Keeper, 2008) and Ḫuḍayr al-Zaydī’s Aṭlas ʿAzrān al-Baġdādī (ʿAzrān al-Baġdādī’s Atlas, 2015). These two chapters differ quite significantly from the previous ones, not only for a less systematic approach, but also because they provide the reader with limited insights into the presence of these minorities in Iraqi literature.

Zeidel’s book offers a general overview of the understudied subject of pluralism in the Iraqi novel, which is a very delicate topic for many actors in Iraq’s literary field. Nevertheless, despite its systematic approach and the variety of representations it explores, the book is characterised by some inaccuracies and omissions. One can notice that Zeidel pays little attention to the authenticity and reliability of the data he mentions. For instance, the author relies on imprecise data while discussing some of the writers’ biographies3 and the content of their novels4. Moreover, one can notice the same inaccuracy when the author quotes Arabic names and expressions, transliterating them in a contradictory and ambiguous way. A few omissions can be observed when Zeidel deals with the state of the art, since no reference is made to some relevant academic works produced about Iraqi literature during the last decades5.

In addition, the book displays some disputable theoretical assumptions. Zeidel considers the representations contained in recent Iraqi novels only in terms of “vraisemblance” or verisimilitude, as if all their authors still abided by the norms and principles of literary realism. In so doing, he disregards studies showing that many Iraqi writers have abandoned this aesthetic tradition for less mimetic types of narration6. Furthermore, in looking simultaneously at literary texts and a social phenomenon such as pluralism, Zeidel often limits himself to a sort of théorie du reflet through which he directly connects the content of these texts to the main historical events of the Iraqi past or the social milieu where their producers were born7. Finally, many passages of the book seem interested in providing the readers with new labels, fresh definitions and ready-made categorisations, as is the case of the novels produced by or about the “Shia” after the Iraqi civil war, the “full-fledged Sunni narrative” found in the second chapter or the label of the so-called “generation of the 1990s” that the author appropriates from an expression produced by the literary field itself [p. 163]. However, these labels and definitions are sometimes used in an uncritical way and overlook the differences existing between texts and authors who are included in the same category.

The problematic features mentioned above do not prevent us from considering Zeidel’s book a first attempt to explore the crucial phenomenon of pluralism in contemporary Iraqi literature. Moreover, his work is a stimulus to expand the research on this production and to integrate the author’s quantitative perspective with a more qualitative one, which could help us take into account the specificities and distinctive features of the works considered.