Novel
دابادا
Not translated into English
Hassan Mutlak · 1988
Synopsis
In a village, Chahine lives with his mother, Hajar, who mourns a husband who vanished without a trace. From his upstairs room, he spies on the world and the neighbours, and first of all Aziza. Around him other stories of the village intertwine: that of the painter Awwad, a hindered artist, that of an enigmatic man in dark glasses, those of a dog and a donkey that take on the value of symbols. All of it is told in a single flow, without chapters, between realism and strangeness.
Context
The novel appeared in Beirut in 1988, from the Dar al-'Arabiyya lil-Mawsu'at, in a single block of two hundred and twenty pages, without chapters: its author was twenty-seven. Jabra Ibrahim Jabra saw in it an unusual, new novel, written by a bold young man. It was reissued in Cairo in 2001 by the Egyptian General Organisation for Books, then by al-Mada, and its author is often compared to the poet Federico García Lorca.
Who it is for
In Arabic, with no French translation. The book asks the reader to accept the absence of chapters and landmarks: one enters it as one enters a current, and critics call it difficult.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by part of the critics as the most important Iraqi novel of the late twentieth century.
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