Novel
الدكتور إبراهيم
Not translated into English
Dhu al-Nun Ayyub · 1939
Synopsis
Ibrahim, a boy of humble origin, returns from a foreign university with a doctorate and means to draw power and fortune from it. He marries an Englishwoman, despises his country and would like, he says, to change his skin and become one of the British. The book follows the rise of this unscrupulous man among civil servants, who play on sectarian affiliations to remove their rivals, and portrays him to the point of caricature as the very image of corruption and careerism.
Context
The novel appeared in 1939, when its author, a mathematics teacher, had already published four story collections. Readers recognised in the hero the director general of education, Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali, who was then the author's employer. The book is counted among the oppositional texts written by Iraqi intellectuals under the monarchy, and it mocks in passing the divisions between Sunnis and Shiites, presented as a political construction.
Who it is for
In Arabic, with no French or English translation. The satire is direct and the portrait of the hero verges on caricature.
Prizes and reception
The best-known work of its author, counted among the founding texts of the Iraqi novel before 1958.
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