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This article consists of two parts: an annotated translation of "The Theory"--an excerpt from the novel Al-Sayyid Asghar Akbar (2012) by Iraqi author Murtadā Gzār--preceded by a critical essay that articulates the socio-historical context of the novel and analyzes it in light of recent research in unnatural narratology. The essay highlights the ways in which the novel departs from the mimetic norms of realism that characterize the dominant narratological models in modern Iraqi and Arabic fiction. It argues that through metalepsis, or transgression of intradiegetic time, coupled with the conceptual restructuring of iconic Iraqi places and discourses, the novel defies our standard knowledge of the procession of historical events in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Iraq. The novel in turn negotiates an entry into liminal discourses that lie on the peripheries of the national narrative of the Ba th as well as the religious counter-narrative of the Shi'l opposition as it is traditionally conceived. The novel exposes the discrepancy between two authoritative, normative processes of historicizing, namely, the 'Rewriting of Iraqi History Project' and the Najafi ijtihād and taqlid traditions. By so doing, the novel at once mirrors the immense complexity of Iraq's modern historiography and accomplishes a skeptical deconstruction of its cultural formations, resulting in a new postcolonial reading of state hegemony, ShI'ism, Najaf, and Iraqi identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]