«Because the world is all interconnected»: immobilità e reti narrative globali nella fiction irachena contemporanea

By looking at Luʾay Ḥamza ʿAbbās’s Ḥaqāʾiq al-ḥayāt al-ṣaghīra (2021), the chapter examines the relationship between globalisation and (im)mobility in contemporary Iraqi fiction. Set in Basra during the Iran – Iraq War, the novel portrays a city increasingly compressed by militarisation and authoritarianism. The central motif – the subterranean community of rats – both emphasises and contradicts this spatial compression: while their menacing presence opens virtual pathways beyond borders, it also reinforces a sense of siege and oppression. Drawing on Emily Apter’s concept of oneworldedness, the chapter reads this construction of a space at once global and claustrophobic as a key element in contemporary Iraqi migration poetics.