Death of Iraqi novelist

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While last minute preparations for the Arab Novel Conference, to be opened in Cairo this Sunday, were underway, novelists across the Arab world were struck by the sad news of the death of the prominent Iraqi novelists Fouad al-Takarli last Monday in Amman. Takarli was born in Baghdad in 1927 where he received his education, graduating from Baghdad University's Law School in the late 1940s. He was one of the last surviving of a group of Iraqi writers and artists who championed modernism in the Arab world and produced influential literary and artistic body of works during the second half of the 20th century. His name is inexorably linked to developing Arab fiction, the way Badr Shakir al-Sayab's name is linked to poetry and Jawad Selim's to art.

After graduating from law school, Takarli rose in the rank of the judiciary until becoming a judge in the 1960s, a profession which had left a strong impact on his very measured literary style as well as his personal mannerism. By the end of the 1980s, Takarli took the decision of leaving Iraq, and he spent the next 20 years traveling between Syria, Tunisia, and finally Amman, where he died this week.

His best known novel in English translation is The Long Way Back, published by the American University Press in Egypt. "This book speaks eloquently of an Iraq which Bush and Blair would have us forget in their focus on the tyrant Saddam Hussein; an Iraq inhabited by living, breathing, suffering individuals and families, much like ourselves but with their own unique stories to tell. These are voices that we urgently need to hear and this important and humane book is an excellent place to begin to listen."

A perfect gentleman, with an incredibly polished manner and an understated way of expressing himself, Takarli will be sorely missed, especially by Arab writers gathering in Cairo this week to discuss the "State of the Arab Novel Now", the theme for this week's fourth round of the Arab Novel Conference.