Research project Death in Contemporary Iraqi Novels

Is the eternal Iraqi mourning a reality or a myth? During the last decades, death appears as a connecting thread in the country’s deteriorating life characterised by the devastating consequences of wars, economic sanctions, foreign military interventions and sectarian conflicts.

Contemporary Iraqi fiction abounds in descriptions of death from the very symbolic images of loss and dying to the realistic scenes of grief, mourning and physical suffering. A number of works have recently focused on the human body and put forward corpses and mortal remains. In these works where death is the main character of the narrative, its representation is often crude, cynical or even ironic.

Attempts of survival and carrying on with life have on the other hand appeared as a natural reaction to death. They have also been represented explicitly or referred to indirectly. In works depicting funeral rituals and acts of remembering for instance death has been associated with themes of living memory and keeping alive national identity. It has been either venerated and honoured or reified. One may wonder if the abundance of Iraqi literature that registers or brings back images of death is not an act of survival by it-self ?

This project aims to study the representations of death in a selection of contemporary Iraqi novels, and in relation to different thematic contexts and problematics. The research outcome is planned to be published in French in 4 academic articles.

Research subjects: Literature, Arabic literature, Narratology

In addition to the previous publications, an article about the representation of death in the novel The Corpse Washer (eng. 2013) by Sinan Antoon is in progress.