In The Other Rooms, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra presents a haunting modernist allegory of identity, repression, and psychological disintegration. Set in an unnamed, dreamlike city that evokes 1980s Baghdad under authoritarian rule, the novel follows an unnamed protagonist who is abruptly swept into a bizarre and nightmarish world. Transported from an empty city square into a surreal compound, he is passed from one strange room to another, encountering shifting characters, false identities, Kafkaesque interrogations, and sensual encounters that blur reality and illusion.
As he is compelled to deliver a lecture on a book he never wrote, the protagonist is repeatedly renamed, disoriented, and dehumanized—mirroring the alienation and paranoia of life under a repressive regime. What initially seems like a psychological breakdown is gradually revealed as a scathing critique of political control, loss of individuality, and the erasure of truth in authoritarian societies.
Written during the Iran-Iraq War, The Other Rooms stands as Jabra’s most radical and experimental work, a powerful blend of absurdity, desire, and despair. It captures the suffocating atmosphere of a world where both personal identity and collective solidarity have collapsed, leaving behind only the echo of resistance through literature and memory.
Other Translations by William Tamplin:
Cry in a Long Night, by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Democracy in the Arab World
Book: Poet of Jordan: The Political Poetry of Muhammad Fanatil Al-Hajaya, (Brill 2018)
Related article:
A Long Night’s Journey in Palestine, Harvard Magazine
William Tamplin, Ph.D. ’20, on the lyricism and secrecy of an Arabic literary pioneer
Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.
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