Abstract
Abstract This article is dedicated to the Iraqi novel al-Mašṭūr : Sitt ṭarāʾiq ġayr šarʿiyya li-iǧtiyāz al-ḥudūd naḥwa Baġdād (2017) by Ḍiyāʾ Ǧbaylī. Through an illegal journey of two characters in Iraq, this book presents a new literary approach of the sectarian conflict that tears apart the country. Intertextuality with the Italian novel The Cloven Viscount (1952), by Italo Calvino, works as a connecting thread in the story. The complex Iraqi identity and the conflicts that are related to it are depicted as the result of both the country’s geographical position and its history. The first part of the article focuses on the spatial configuration in the story and the way the concept of borders is used to define the Iraqi identity. The latter is also the object of the second part that attempts to discuss the close relationship that the novel suggests between the body of the martyr and the homeland.
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