Studies in

Fahad Mahmoud al-Asadi (1939-2013) is one of those Iraqi authors and storytellers who, through creating realistic novels, has focused on representing and portraying the social life of rural people in southern Iraq. Relying on his artistic skills to produce well-structured narratives filled with beautiful literary devices, such as simile, metonymy, and metaphor, this novelist has attracted the attention of a large audience. This research, using the analytical-descriptive method, in addition to analyzing The Aasthetic of imagery in al-Asadi’s stories, investigates the rhetorical dimensions of his works. This research focused its analysis on Al-Asadi’s five works: The novel “The Cross; Halab Bin Ghariba” and the novel “Darat Al-Ihsan” and the collections of short stories: “Aden is lost” and "Sky Birds" and "Muamra Ali". All of these fictional creations depict the bitter social reality that the southern people were living in in Iraq. In the first novel, the novelist embodied the manifestations of injustice and suffering that the feudal system imposed on the peasants and the weak toiling classes, so he called, through an indirect call through this novel, to reject all kinds of oppression and tyranny. As for the second novel, it represents the prevailing social customs in southern Iraq, with all the beliefs, superstitions, and customary traditions that cannot be accepted by common sense. This novel is a true picture of the contradictions of rural society and its constant struggle between old and new. The third group of stories comes to explicitly show the class distinction between the segments of the same society, the extent of its danger to people's lives and its catastrophic repercussions that lead to the fragmentation and dispersion of people. The fourth group dealt with human issues and social concerns, while the fifth group came to criticize the lack of awareness and widespread ignorance among the backward classes of society. This research also aims to recover the aesthetic aspects of these works and show the extent of their impact on the audience. Among many findings of this research, we can point to the fact that the author attempts to discover the unwritten through the analysis of surface phenomena by using the techniques of narrative imagery in the framework of different readings. The author's approach, in line with the narrative discourse and the technical structure of the story, avoids any exaggeration.