Fiction
2020
Over the Jumhuriya Bridge
by Shahad Al Rawi
This novel, a bestseller in Baghdad, starts with the first two American tanks that crossed over the Jumhuriya Bridge into the heart of Baghdad in 2003, as the narrator watches events unfold from her grandfather’s house at the riverfront. That’s when her emigration journey begins, setting her on a path to experience both love and death away from her country. After her mother passes away, her father resorts to quantum physics in an attempt to interpret the meaning of existence, while the nameless protagonist discovers the novels of Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, and Francoise Sagan. ///The author depicts how different generations of the same family live different worlds, separated by experiences and time despite occupying the same physical spaces. The Jumhuriya Bridge threads symbolism throughout the novel—ushering in the beginning of the military fall of the city and later being the setting of sporadic events, from innocent flirting, to gulls, down to the shocking event that pushes the story up to its climax.
