Nuri was best known for his short story "Fattuma" but also published several collections of novels during the 1950s, including: The Last Lantern, Omar Beg, The Handmaid, The Smile and Spring, The Wall of Silence (1953), The Little Man (1953), and The Song of the Earth (1954).
He was also the author of an essay on the "Tragedy of Art ", several short stories featured in his collection Rusul al-Insaniyya (1946), and the play Wood and Velvet (1980).
The short story was renowned for its episodic, lyricist, and nonlinear structure, as well as its compelling and daring portrayal of life under threat.
[6] Nuri's work began to become well-known outside of Iraq and was part of a revival movement of Iraqi literature that was also picked up by writers such as Nazik al-Mala'ika and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.
The two plays concerned a character named "Dudu" who suffered from being a descendant of the failed playwright and had appeared in a previous short story titled "Ma'sat al-Fann" (The Tragedy of Art), published in 1946.
[11] Nuri would also use the concept of "blindness", both physically, and symbolically, to criticize the traditional Iraqi society and the unfair treatment of its people.
The story follows a mother named Khuḍayrah who travels to find the holy man so that he could cure her blind daughter Khādjiyah.
Khuḍayrah's faith is further reflected in perceiving the sounds of a train wheel as "Allahu Akbar" and her desire to visit the Imam Husayn shrine to gain barakah.