Llagrimes sobre Bagdad (2008), by Gemma Pasqual | Escrivá: The Iraq war (2003) as literary pretext

Abstract

Llagrimes sobre Bagdad (2008) is the title of the winning novel of the 2007 Barcanova Children's and Young People's Literature Prize. lts authoress, the prolific young people's novelist Gemma Pasqual who has written over a dozen teenage novels, offers a detailed account of the cruelty of the Iraq War (2003) and the consequences of the violent conflict on the life of a young lragi girl, Erfan, and her entire family. This article aims at analyzing the literary depiction of the Iraq War in this young people's novel; the main character's growth towards maturity, despite her adolescence being interrupted by war; and, lastly, the role played by the macro-space and micro-spaces appearing in the text in the development of the military conflict that leaves ¡ts young readers anything but indifferent.
The analysis of these components enables one to state that Llágrimes sobre Bagdad is a novel of enormous expressive quality whose message for peace leaves a strong mark on the young reader.