The absurdity of the reality of baghdad in the short story “the bare face inside the dream”, by Ahmed Saadawi
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2446-5240.malala.2025.240716Keywords:
Ahmed Saadawi, Iraqi literature, Arabic, translation, short storyAbstract
Ahmed Saadawi is a contemporary Iraqi writer committed to expressing the insanity of his country’s conflicts through art. In his best-known novel, Frankenstein in Baghdad (2014), supernatural elements are intertwined with the reality of Baghdad ravaged by the post-2003 conflicts. After the US invasion and the end of the Baathist dictatorship, Iraq plunged into violent conflicts, which intensified between 2006 and 2008. This is the setting for Saadawi’s short story “The Bare Face inside the Dream” , published in 2018, — translated in this article from Arabic to Portuguese — but set in 2007. Amongst reality, dreams and imagination, we experience the terrible sectarian conflicts in Baghdad.
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