Outside the Prison Walls

‘Timeless and brilliant ... The interviews with Munif, along with Maher Jarrar’s accompanying background essays, offer a master class in the geopolitics of revolutionary knowledge and imagination’ Ammiel Alcalay, author (with Kholoud Hammad) of Imperial Abhorrences / For Palestine

‘A powerful tribute to one of the twentieth century’s most important yet underappreciated novelists’ Rosie Bsheer, Associate Professor of History, Harvard University

Abdalrahman Munif was a towering, transformative figure in Arabic literature. The author of more than 25 books, he was a public intellectual and an icon of principled opposition to authoritarian regimes. Today, he is one of the most-read novelists in the Arab world. Though he died in 2004, much of his oeuvre feels like it could have been written yesterday. 

Born and raised in Jordan, Munif spent much of his adulthood in Iraq, Egypt and Syria – a lifetime of experience that sharpened his unique perspective on the social, political, and economic realities of the region. 

Outside the Prison Walls is the first English language collection bringing together some of Munif’s most enduring non-fiction writings with a series of interviews conducted in late 2003, shortly before his death. The essays, interviews, and enlightening commentary by Maher Jarrar take the reader on a journey, intertwining historical and current events in Iraq and the wider region, as well as politics and literature, with the personal story of one of the most important Arab novelists and intellectuals of our times.

Abdalrahman Munif (1933-2004) studied law at Baghdad University and later in Cairo and Belgrade, where he received his PhD in the economics of oil, and later lived in Baghdad, Paris, and Damascus. He is best known for his novels, especially the Cities of Salt quintet, which was banned in Saudi Arabia due to its uncompromising critique of the royal family. In his later life, he opposed the American invasion of Iraq and spent his final years working on non-fiction projects denouncing US imperialism.