Reading and Writing in Al-Masarrat Wa'l-Awja by Fu'ad al-Takarli

In Fuad al-Takarli's first novel, Basqa fi wajh al-hayat (Cologne 2000, but written 1948), and more particularly in his latest novel, al-Masarrat wa'l-awja (Damascus 1998), there are many allusions to the acts of reading and writing. This metafictional element reflects a tension present in al-Takarli's work between a genuine scepticism about the value of fiction and a profound belief in its importance, particularly in the context of modern Iraq. Al-Takarli's recurrent questioning of the processes of fiction, and his varied dramatisations of the reader's contribution to making the text, link him to other post-Mahfuzian writers, while the subversive attitudes underlying his metafiction are distinctive.