The death of the book seller - Saad Mohammed Raheem

Number of pages: 219 Publisher: Dar Satturo Book description: The novelist Saad Mohammed Raheem played in his new novel (The Murder of the Bookseller) on more than one blog, where he invoked memoirs, letters, reflections, and other topics that have a direct impact on the life of the protagonist (Mahmoud Al-Marzoq). This complex character carries within him many files and an ambiguous problematic life, as well as numerous relationships that added a global hue to the atmosphere of the novel, in addition to its pure local spirit. (Mahmoud Al-Marzoq), who mistakenly returns to Iraq, and a series of mistakes follow his life, until his death was not intended in the assassination process but another person. But his assassination incident is what ignited all this secret history, and through it, the novelist took us back to the beginnings, as if he returned to form a scene of the beginnings of creation or the beginnings of nations and kingdoms. I felt while reading the novel that I know Al-Marzoq or that I perhaps met him in my cultural life with the Iraqi intellectuals. He is a painter and a lover of music, literature, languages, books, beauty, and intimate human relationships. Personally, I found in him my own self, embodying all the intertwined meanings of life that the Iraqi intellectual and creative lives experience. Therefore, this hero summarizes a history full of awareness and struggle, both inside and outside Iraq, establishing a human condition we have seen in many of our lives, daring to enter its harsh experiences with different directions and ideas. Thus, although the hero is leftist, as I mentioned, I saw myself in him. From here comes the ability of the skilled novelist to draw the features of his main character so that they blend with reality, fade into it, and are embodied in this reality with all its complexes, revolts, anger, and uprisings. (The Murder of the Bookseller) is one of the novels that establish what I call the history of books through the employment of the library and characters, as in (Fahris) by Sinan Anton, and also in Khedir Faleh Al-Zaydi’s (Constantine Hotel), whether in Al-Mutanabbi Street or a narrative of the life of a library and the history of the bookmen who began establishing publishing houses and cultural institutions with a clear significance. Therefore, the novel (The Murder of the Bookseller) carries an underlying feature that falls under the term post-dictatorship novel. This term has become common in cultural and narrative circles due to its clear importance in adding a new, confident step capable of establishing and transcending. The Iraqi novelist Saad Mohammed Raheem is one of the capable Iraqi writers who, through more than one novelistic step, achieved a form of a mature experience and an important narrative ability that added a clear aesthetic dimension to Iraqi storytelling.