No Windmills in Basra

By Diaa Jubaili Translated by Chip Rossetti A bold, imaginative collection of short stories set in Southern Iraq from prolific, award-winning novelist Diaa Jubaili. Publication Date: September 6, 2022 Paperback: 9781646051861 eBook: 9781646051878 Description Influenced in turn by the long tradition of Arabic folktales and the magical realism of Latin America, the stories in No Windmills in Basra reflect a reality tinged by the city’s history with war. Yet the fantastic and playful peek through, offering an astounding breadth of images in only a few lines per story. In “Mubarak,” a security guard for a chicken plant discovers his own wings after a bomb explosion. In “The Taste of Death,” long-buried Iraqi and Iranian soldiers rise from their unmarked graves, dissatisfied with the landscape’s returning verdancy. Set in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where the author still l