One hundred years of madness far inside the forest - an intellectual vision

Author's name: Fadil Al-Azawidaar Publisher: Al-Jamal Publications for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2023 Literary classification: Philosophy and Thought Brief about the book: Issued by "Al-Jamal Publications" a book titled "One Hundred Years of Madness Far Inside the Forest," by Iraqi poet and novelist Fadil Al-Azawi. The work, as stated on the back cover of the book, is "an attempt to critique the structure of repression, dictatorship, ignorance, and corruption, intellectually, socially, politically, and culturally over more than a century, in order to restore the importance of freedom as the source of all creativity." In the book, Al-Azawi addresses various topics, such as the conflict between the Arab and Islamic worlds, which he says appears political on the surface, but in reality is connected to the entire culture, and to "a long history of illusions and historical falsehoods that were endowed with the attribute of sanctity and led many nationalist and leftist intellectual and political movements to bring the present down to the depths of the past in the name of modernity and the calls for authenticity itself, ignoring that true modernity and authenticity mean liberation from everything that blocks the way to the future." The book urges the necessity of linking "the renewal of Arab societies necessarily to the construction of a new human civilization from which it emerges." Fadil Al-Azawi is an Iraqi poet, novelist, and translator. He was born in Kirkuk. He graduated from the University of Baghdad with a bachelor's degree in English Literature in 1966, then obtained a doctorate from Leipzig University in Germany in 1983. He worked in journalism. He contributed to the publication of the poetry magazine 69 in Baghdad and was one of four poets who issued what was known as the poetic statement, which caused a stir at the time.