Above the land of blackness

The writer bases the poetics of his narrative text on humor and sarcasm, which distinguish his style and give it a special presence in our current Iraqi literary scene. Sarcasm and sarcasm are not intended in themselves in Girgis’s texts, as their use is linked to the context of the idea’s production and the time of formulating the phrase, which here is subject to disciplined aesthetic strategies that distance it from vulgarity and useless padding. The author’s sarcasm does not exclude any field that it can reach, as it touches politics, approaches religion, and touches on traditions without claiming philosophy or feigning wisdom. Azhar Girgis does not want his text, or so I think, to reproduce Schopenhauer or repeat Berghausen’s copies. Girgis’s writings are simple, clear, and not multidimensional, and perhaps this is what will guarantee their uniqueness in a cultural milieu that feeds on tragedy and a historical context that considers death a serious act and mocks laughter on the pretext that it is a position that does not suit the stage. The texts of this collection, Above the Land of Blackness, have a special flavour that will one day impose its presence and change the bleak face that has always characterized our Iraqi literature from its birth until today.