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Contributor

Najem Wali

Contributor

Najem Wali

Iraq

Najem Wali was born in al-Amara, Iraq, in 1956, and earned a degree in German literature from Baghdad University in 1978. In 1980 he left Iraq and settled in Hamburg, where he earned an M.A. in German literature in 1987. From 1987 to 1990 he lived in Madrid, where he studied Spanish and Latin-American literature....

He is the author of five novels and three short-story collections, and his work has been translated into several languages. His most recent novel is Baghdad . . . Marlboro: A Novel for Bradley Manning. Wali now lives in Berlin, where he works as a freelance journalist and cultural correspondent for the largest Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat.

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Articles by Najem Wali

The Sad Portuguese

At that exact moment, more than sixty jets flew overhead.

Translated from Arabic by Peter Theroux

Salman and the Mule Suicides

Mules in this country had become conscientious objectors.

Translated from Arabic by William Maynard Hutchins

From “Kumait”

After reading Crime and Punishment when he was a student he had contemplated killing Umm Husayn.

Translated from Arabic by William Maynard Hutchins

Visiting the Morgue

Yusuf caught a quick look at the box’s label: “Container for Cut-off Ears and Earlobes.”

Translated from Arabic by William Maynard Hutchins

The Black Storyteller

I remember that in 1967, when I was a child, only five years old, I told her about my fear-a strange thing; I don't know where it came from.

Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Kaplan

Edward and the First Geography Lesson

Now we begin the journey. Don't be shocked by the job I charge you with.

Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Kaplan

Iraq Stories

They are simple stories, most of which have nothing to do with blood or death or disappearance or mass graves. Rather they are gaunt like a body exhausted by disease, and describe the general situation in Iraq.

Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Kaplan

Basra Stories

I was born in Basra many times, in all of the stories that I heard about it-in the stories which were told around me when I was a child, in the images I formed of it during my first trips there with my…

Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Kaplan

Waltzing Matilda

In war, nothing has meaning except escape or imprisonment.

Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth

Homeland as Exile, Exile as Homeland

This temporal and spatial here and there are interchangeable according to the power of the artist's passion and perseverance in making his art, as well as his eternal alliance with the higher power that he recognizes and his refusal to bow down to temporary…

Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Kaplan