Al Majalla's Book Watch

At its heart, this is a book about inner transformation—what it means for a woman to offer her life so that another may begin. Kayyali writes of love at its most intense, indistinguishable from survival. She presents the body as a silent battleground and discovers deep reserves of strength just when she feels most vulnerable. Women, she writes, are "creators of meaning".

Told with a calm, unembellished voice and candid introspection, the narrative traces a fine line between literature and memoir, between reflection and the quiet philosophy of everyday life, inviting readers into a profoundly human experience. It reminds us that the suffering body can become a lens through which life is seen more clearly. In penning her experience, Kayyali grants others the courage to look at their pain as a possible path toward salvation and survival.

A Warm, Luminous House: The Home in Iraqi Culture

Edited and Introduced by: Luay Hamza Abbas

Publisher: Dar al-Jamal, Iraq

In this book, a group of Iraqi writers gathers to reclaim the image of the houses they once lived in or lost, set against the shifting terrain of their lives. It treats the home not as a physical structure but as an existential presence in both individual and communal life, opening a contemplative space in which memory, identity, and belonging converge.

The book offers a rich meditation on the home's role in Iraqi cultural consciousness, exploring the home as a haven of serenity, source of identity, and safe sanctuary. It follows how this space intertwines with personal and collective memory, particularly in a nation shaped by war, displacement, exile, and fragmentation.

What begins as a reflection on domestic life gradually unfolds into a broader exploration of the Iraqi relationship with place, and the ways in which this relationship influences thoughts, feelings, and self-image. As the contributors demonstrate, speaking of 'home' entails a deeper engagement with the human condition. Beyond the tangible confines of walls and rooms, they explore the emotional and symbolic weight that homes carry.

The book offers a layered and intimate portrait of how Iraqi intellectuals recall their first houses and how the experience of moving affected them emotionally. These reflections resonate in a society where displacement has touched nearly everyone. For many contributors, the home emerges as a symbol of early life, of dreams once nurtured, and of a longing that endures even amid new places and geographies. It affirms the home's profound connection to identity, relationships, and emotional continuity.

The book also reveals generational diversity in these experiences, offering a panoramic view of Iraq's evolving social and cultural fabric through decades of upheaval and change. More than a literary work, this collection may be read as a meditation on place as a living entity that engages in dialogue with human experience and sustains it. The essays turn the home into an entry point for reflecting on existence itself.

They raise essential questions about the link between self and space, and about the home's role as both witness and participant in the stories of individuals and nations. Through these narratives, readers may trace political and social shifts that have left lasting imprints on Iraqi society. This volume is a significant contribution to Iraqi and Arab cultural thought, addressing a seemingly simple subject that carries immense emotional and symbolic weight. In doing so, it affirms the enduring power of home as both memory and meaning.

The Philosopher of His Hour

By: Taha Abderrahman

Publisher: Maghreb Centre for Human Social Studies, Morocco

This book begins with a proposition: a philosopher fulfils the essence of philosophy only when he is fully engaged with the urgencies of his time, responsive to its questions, anchored in present realities and ethical possibilities, positioned between thought and lived experience. In laying out such a proposition, the author, Taha Abderrahman, peels philosophy away from the confines of abstraction and presents it as an existential practice rooted in the shifting conditions of human life.

In this work, he articulates a response to what he sees as today's erosion of values and retreat of truth. At its heart is the concept of 'philosophical watchfulness'. This witness to the dangers of what Abderrahman calls absolute evil, a force that obstructs both reason and will, obscuring truth from lies. For Abderrahman, the philosopher is no distant observer, but is entrenched in his time, committed to defending truth. He does not pursue detached ideas, but safeguards value itself.

In an age marked by moral confusion and of thought disintegrating under the weight of crisis, the book asks whether philosophy can still be abstract, or whether it needs to have an ethical orientation. Abderrahman seeks to reunite thought with conscience, and knowledge with moral action. Philosophy, he argues, draws its vitality from its proximity to the real, and from its alignment with lived concerns.

The author reaffirms philosophy as a form of testimony, a defence against distortion, a mirror held to a world where values are under siege, and a means of measuring human truth in the face of historical collapse. The Philosopher of His Hour may be read as a philosophical manifesto of rare coherence and clarity.

Essay on the Art of Crawling

By: Henri Thiry d'Holbach

Translator: Belkacem Krisaan

Publisher: Abkalo Publishing and Distribution, Iraq

Henri Thiry d'Holbach, the Franco-German philosopher, writer and encyclopaedist (1723–1789), ranks among the most prominent figures of the French Enlightenment. His seminal work, The System of Nature, exerted a lasting influence on European intellectual history and shaped the philosophical development of Karl Marx through its bold materialist vision.

The Art of Crawling, now translated into Arabic, was published posthumously as part of a collection of literary and philosophical letters addressed to a German prince. The editors referred to the texts as "philosophical curiosities". It was first printed in 1813 under the title An Essay on the Art of Crawling, for the Use of Courtiers.

This text is razor-sharp in tone and takes the form of a practical manual for courtiers and ambitious officials seeking favour at court. Holbach employs satire, offering mock advice on how to climb the rungs of power through obsequiousness, flattery, and sycophancy of the kind that lay at the heart of 18th-century absolutist rule. Yet behind it lies a devastating critique of those who bend so wholly to the whims of their superiors.

Holbach presents the courtier as an entity devoid of independent character, whose personality shifts with the temperament of the ruler and who seeks validation not through virtue, merit, or conviction, but through his proximity to authority. Ambition, in this manual, advances not through intellect or ethical substance, but by mastering the theatrical arts of affectation, servility, and unrestrained praise.

The ideal courtier is one who suppresses belief in favour of expediency, who speaks only to echo power, and who alters his alliances and opinions with fluidity when required. Holbach lists a series of satirical 'rules' such as closely observing the ruler's moods, renouncing past loyalties without hesitation, and tailoring one's public stance to match—with perfect fidelity—the preferences of authority. He must be ready to discard principles, abandon comrades, and adjust his ethics to suit the prevailing winds.

Beyond the personal conduct of the courtier, the text delves into courtly power, with its jealousy, secrecy, manoeuvrings, and suspicion. The political world is painted as a jungle of hidden intrigues in which only the adeptly duplicitous endure. Power, in this view, breeds pathology. Holbach draws a penetrating connection between authoritarian governance and social hypocrisy. Corruption at the top, he argues, breeds corruption below. Tyranny relies not only on force but on the servile machinery of flatterers.

The work transcends satire to become a pointed philosophical commentary on political ethics. The Art of Crawling is both biting satire and serious work of enlightenment thought. It unmasks the human instruments of despotism, using irony as a tool of critique. In exposing the servitude that sustains tyranny, Holbach offers not only a portrait of the courtier's world, but a mirror to power itself.