Imagining Iraq and the Cultural Politics of Misreading: John Barth’s The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

Year 2005, Issue: 21, 27 - 40, 01.04.2005

Wang Jianping

Abstract

The publication of John Barth's novel The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor London: 1991 in the midst of the Persian Gulf War has raised certain questions concerning the book's representation of medieval Arabian culture and Barth's political intent on current Middle East affairs. A reworking of the Sindbad story from The Thousand and One Nights, the novel invokes the bustling medieval city of Baghdad where much of the novel's action takes place. Scenes shift in the locale of the Persian Gulf, between Baghdad and Basra, names that come rather hauntingly into the news today. Written before Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the first phase of the War Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 , the book was published in the month when the war was approaching its violent conclusion. As the novel hit the bookstands in the early spring of 1991, allied bombing of Baghdad reached its greatest intensity and coalition forces drove to the very outskirts of Basra itself.