Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures

By Fadhil al-Azzawi

First time ever in English translation for this acclaimed 'open work', published in Arabic in 1969 to great acclaim, written in defiance of the “sanctity of genre” and to raise the question of freedom of expression in writing. Variously called a novel or a prose poem, the author calls it an epic in prose, divided into cantos. In mid-1960s Iraq such an open-ended form, in which different genres come together and blend into each other, was difficult to even imagine. For Fadhil al-Azzawi it was the core of a new vision of life after the country's tough political experiences, especially the bloody coup of February 1963, and then abysmal defeat in the June 1967 Six-Day War. The preface to the original Arabic edition noted: “Everything in this open novel returns to itself and acquires its own particular innocence, even in language, so that the novel becomes a poem, a play, a film, a painting and a piece of music all at once without ever meaning to [. . .] It talks about itself in its own very particular way, where it says nothing specific so that it can say everything.” Fadhil al-Azzawi writes on how he came to write "Beautiful Creatures", explaining: "The tough political experiences we went through in Iraq, especially the bloody coup of February 1963, and then defeat in the June 1967 war, drove us to question many of the values entrenched in our society and culture, and to strive to liberate our minds from every restraint and illusion that had taken root throughout history. At the same time, the rest of the world was witnessing a revolution to liberate thought, art and culture that was radically transforming the face of Western societies. After spending three years in prison, this is how I found myself liberated from any worn-out ideological illusions, having grasped the tragic nature of the relationship between the victim and the executioner not only in the field of politics, but also in thought. Above all else, I had grasped what it meant to be against any and all illusions."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Banipal Publishing
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913043117

Book preview

THE LONESOME TRAVELLER

A manifesto released by the author and his crazy hero

Following my tracks in the sand,

I found myself in a town on a hillside.

Dead men, waiting for me, gave me back

the book of my life, which

I had once hidden in God’s drawers.

On returning to Baghdad after three years in a desert prison in Babel, I rented a small room in a huge old house that was on the verge of collapsing, full of rats and scorpions who would leave their small, dark, hidey-holes as soon as the sun went down, and attack all those who came back late at night. It had been the home of a Jewish goldsmith who had emigrated to Israel years ago without appointing an agent to take care of it. In this house lived no fewer than ten poor Chaldean families who had been obliged by war to leave their green villages in the north and come here: the first way station on their long journey to distant Detroit in America. There, between 1965 and 1967, when I was still young and full of life, alternating between my cold, damp room with nothing but a bagful of books, two ragged black army blankets and a pillow, and the cheap coffeehouses where I drank sweet black tea and smoked cheap Ghazi cigarettes, I sat nearly every day, musing on the events of my life and writing a book full of poems and dreams. It was my