The Novel of The Death of a Bookseller A Critical Study

Abstract

Death of a Bookseller is a novel by Iraqi author Saad Mohammad Raheem. Its events span the tragedies of Iraq after the war of 2003, presenting sharp details on the days of the collapse of the state at that time. The novel is the story of a Marxist old man who is assassinated by a silencer and a journalist is later commissioned to write a book on his life and death. The journalist’s search ends with the discovery of the dead’s diaries. This is a critical study of the aesthetic aspects of the novel for a better understanding of the author’s message and what makes this novel so important that it was finalized for the Arabic Booker Prize. Scrutiny of the novel’s narrative and temporal structures and characterization shows that the text of the novel is far from perfection due to over narration and overextended of places and characters. This study also shows that the author’s rich intellectual background makes itself clear in the chapters of the novel. This novel is one of the memoirs and autobiographical narration that lacks diversity and stops short of complete exploitation of narrative time in particular. This makes such types of novels a sort of boring. The novelist, however, was able to cleverly put to use all the potentials of flashback and narrative diversity of characters' background by reaching backward in time all over the text of the novel.