Selim Matar

Selim Matar, writer, novelist and sociologist with Swiss and Iraqi nationalities, was born in Bagdad and resides currently in Geneva. He is founder of the movement known as “Identity of the Iraqi Nation”, chief editor of the trimestral journal Mesopotamie, as well as author of Woman of the Flask, a well known novel in the Arabic-speaking world.

Biography

Selim Matar was born in 1956 in a family that immigrated to Baghdad from the south of Iraq. He becomes member of the Iraqi communist party and leaves his country at the end of 1978, after the failure of what is known as the “national confrontation” between the ruling party Baas and the communists. After three years of ceaseless wanderings in the Middle-East, he finally settles down in Geneva at the end of 1981. He studied at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, specializing in social sciences and research in the Third World.

The conception of national identity and that of the Iraqi nation

In Switzerland, Selim Matar distanced himself from communism from two points: its internationalist and economic mode of thinking, which disregards national identity and cultural factors, and the materialist Marxist philosophy which denies spirituality. From being a “universalist materialist”, he becomes now a “spiritual humanist”, believing in cosmic forces, not by adopting any specific religion, but rather in being open to and in studying diverse beliefs from all around the world.