Narrating Fantasy in Burhan Shawi's Mortuary of Baghdad

Mortuary of Baghdad is a novel by Iraqi novelist Burhan Shawi. It depicts the tragic reality of post-2003 Iraq and its bloodshed moments, notably, the sectarian conflict of the years 2006-2007. Al-Shawi uses the style of fantasy which blurs the borderlines between life and death as the living-dead co-exist with the dead-living in an interrelated network of human relations and sorrows.This study follows the qualitative approach (analytico-descriptive method) to analyze the role of fantasy in building up the narrative to communicate the writer’s message to the reader.This novel hinges on establishing a semiotic parallel between the two central places of the narrative: Baghdad and the mortuary. Both are places of the dead and when the narrative blurs the boundaries between death and life these two places become the mortuary of Bagdad.The study comprises three sections. The first introduces the novel and the application of fantasy as a narrative style in the novel. Section two discusses the novel as a narrative fantasy. The third section explores the writer’s use of temporal fantasy in relation to the established norms of realism.