2020/ 2021
Dust That Never Settled: Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War in Arabic and Persian Literatures
This book project is the first comparative study of the massive literary output of the Iran-Iraq War—the longest two-state war of the twentieth century—in both Arabic and Persian. In bringing together these two literatures, it argues for the expansion of modern comparative literary studies across the two languages based on common experiences of war and writing under authoritarian regimes. The book focuses on prose fiction to demonstrate how Iraqi and Iranian writers have wrestled with the brutal reality of the war and its politically contentious legacy from 1980 until today. In doing so, Dust That Never Settled argues that writers from both countries have transformed literatures that were once entirely militarized and sponsored by warring governments into literatures of loss, mourning and resistance.
2016/ 2017
Dust That Never Settled: Ideology, Ambivalence, Disenchantment and the Legacy of the Iran-Iraq War in Arabic and Persian Fiction
This book project is a comparative study of how Iraqi and Iranian writers have treated the Iran-Iraq War, from the eruption of the conflict, in 1980, to the present day. In bringing together Arabic and Persian fiction from this period, the book will create a new framework for the study of the two modern literary traditions through the lens of the war and its politically contentious legacy. Moosavi argues that the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq created similar material and intellectual conditions for literary production in both countries and as such, the literature of the war is a rich area for comparative literary study between modern Arabic and Persian literatures. Critically, he demonstrates how writers in the postwar period (after 1988), have relied on similar thematic concerns and aesthetic techniques to challenge the militant, ideological literatures of the war produced during the 1980s, with a special focus on representations of martyrdom and mourning. The book charts out ways in which these two national literatures converge and diverge, as Iranian and Iraqi writers continue to wrestle with the politically contentious issue of the legacy of the Iran-Iraq War.