This exploration of the work of Iraqi novelists begins with the early pioneering works and then moves towards an outline of the vibrant Baghdad cultural scene during the 1940s and 1950s. It pays articular attention to detailed textual analysis and the evaluation and comparison of the aesthetic and poetic qualities of the key works of the four writers who form the central subject of the book: Abd al-Malik Nuri (192198), Gha'ib Tu'ma Farman (192790), Mahdi Isa al-Saqr (19272006) and Fu'ad al-Takarli (19272008) all of whom began to write in or around the pivotal decade of the 1950s.

It is in these writers' works that Iraqi fiction came of age and reached artistic maturity. The best of them are among the most complex portrayals of the particularities of life in Iraq and the human condition in general to come out of the Arab world.