Shahad Al Rawi

Her debut novel The Baghdad Clock (2016) was nominated for the Arabic Booker Prize and was shortlisted, marking herself the youngest author to reach the list at that time.

Her background in the humanities, in particular Anthropology have reflected clearly in her ability to communicate complex ideas through her novels representing individual and ethnographic changes in pre-war, post-war, and at war populations.

[5][6] The author's debut novel The Baghdad Clock received acclaim for its technical prowess in channeling time as a narrator within an unconventional structure.

[7] During an interview Al-Rawi says, “My novel about the people of my generation and my city, Baghdad, which I left and did not leave me, about our childhood, adolescence, youth, and our hopes and dreams which I tried to protect from forgetfulness and prevent from being lost".

Such authors I've been influenced by include Emma Cline, Jojo Moyes, H. L. Dennis and others, as the novel has become with them a world of deep emotional flow, which does not hesitate to accept illusions and dreams as a real part of the living reality, and they have no problem for magic to interfere in changing the direction of events and its reformulation without sacrificing reality".

The heroine of "Over the Jumhuriya Bridge" recalls how American tanks crossed into the heart of Baghdad, indicating the end of Iraq that everyone knew and the beginning of the unknown journey that many people had to take.

This is evidenced by the anonymous protagonist of the novel, who in the book does not have any clear sense of belonging, not with her sister, father, cousin, or friends.