An ecocritical perspective of flora and fauna under the 2003 invasion of Iraq in American and Iraqi novels

Abstract EN

This essay offers ecocritical discussions of Iraqi flora and fauna under the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the point of view of both American and Iraqi novelists.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the American Kevin Powers's in The Yellow Birds (2012) and Iraqi Sinan Antoon's in The Book of Collateral Damage (2019) extend their moral mission of the 2003 invasion of Iraq which moves beyond the human species to include flora and fauna in light of ecocriticism.

More specifically, the paper attempts to expose the outrageous things reflected by Antoon and Powers that the US invasion has done to flora and fauna which are officially ignored.

It also examines the proper employment of different forms of symbolism and techniques to strengthen their ecological conservation values.

The study concludes that despite the selected writers' different experiences of colonialism, they similarly stand in creating eco-consciousness that comes from their understanding that the costs of war are not only measured by the loss of humans, but also by the devastation of flora and fauna to institutionalize a strong oppositional stance towards the war in Iraq.