1st Edition
Reading Iraqi Women’s Novels in English Translation Iraqi Women’s Stories
By exploring how translation has shaped the literary contexts of six Iraqi woman writers, this book offers new insights into their translation pathways as part of their stories’ politics of meaning-making.
The writers in focus are Samira Al-Mana, Daizy Al-Amir, Inaam Kachachi, Betool Khedairi, Alia Mamdouh and Hadiya Hussein, whose novels include themes of exile, war, occupation, class, rurality and storytelling as cultural survival. Using perspectives of feminist translation to examine how Iraqi women’s story-making has been mediated in English translation across differing times and locations, this book is the first to explore how Iraqi women’s literature calls for new theoretical engagements and why this literature often interrogates and diversifies many literary theories’ geopolitical scope.
This book will be of great interest for researchers in Arabic literature, women’s literature, translation studies and women and gender studies.
Chapter 1: Pathways of Iraqi women’s story-writing in English translation
Chapter 2: Translating ‘the Uncanny’- Samira Al-Mana and Daizy Al-Amir
- The ‘Uncanny’ and الإغتراب [al-ightirāb] as home, exile and ‘normality’ in Iraqi literature
- Samira Al-Mana & حبل السرة [The Umbilical Cord] (1990): recovering lost stories
- Daizy Al-Amir: على لائحة الانتظار [On The Waiting List] (1988): an uncanny staging
Chapter 3: Translating gendered dis/location in post-2003 Iraq - Inaam Kachachi
- الحفيدة الأميركية [The American Granddaughter]: critical contexts
- الحفيدة الأميركية [The American Granddaughter] (2009) ‘doubled’ in translation
- A comparative reading: the politics of gender (dis/re) location in re/translation
- (Re)locating different women’s voices in Arabic and English para/translation
- Conclusion: a paradigm of aural feminist translation
Chapter 4: Conversations about ‘solidarity among the subaltern’ - Betool Khedairi
- كم بدت السماء قريبة! [A Sky So Close!]: critical contexts
- Reading Iraqi women writing ‘solidarity among the subaltern’ across languages
- Interactions as conversations: para/translating Iraqi rurality
- Cross-language representations of Iraqi alterity and solidarity
Chapter 5: Re/writing confrontations in translation: Alia Mamdouh and Hadiya Hussein
- Beyond gendered binaries of violence: reading Iraqi women’s literature of war and conflict
- حبات النفتالين [Mothballs] by Alia Mamdouh: critical contexts
- Mothballs and Naphtalene: confronting gendered un/translatabilities and conflict
- ما بعد الحب [Beyond Love] (2003): critical contexts
- Para/translating confrontations of war: au/their/ing Iraqi solidarity across languages
Ongoing questions: re/reading Iraq women’s stories in English (para) translation
Biography
Ruth Abou Rached is a Lecturer in Arabic Cultural Studies for the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Manchester. Her book on Iraqi women’s literature was inspired by community work and teaching in the UK, and living in the Middle East. Her research interests include Iraqi and Arab women’s writing, Palestinian and other exilic literatures, postcolonial literary studies and intersectional feminist translation theories. She is editor for New Voices in Translation Studies, International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).
"It is a valuable read for scholars of translation studies, Arabic literature (especially Iraqi women’s literature), and women and gender studies—among others. In short, Abou Rached is on the pulse of contemporary Iraqi women’s writing in translation and achieves the purpose she has set out for: to provide a focused overview and encourage further research." - International Journal of Middle East Studies
"... this incisive study sets an excellent example of the productive ways “para/translatory politics” can be engaged with in literary studies. Its prioritization of close readings is particularly commendable, guiding readers through the mechanics and challenges of translation in forensic detail. As it lingers in these intricacies, it offers a much-needed intervention when a growing number of texts by Iraqi authors are circulating in translation." - Middle Eastern Literatures
