In this lecture I wish to examine how romantic relationships between men and women are presented in the novels of the émigré Iraqi writer Ghaib Tu'ma Farman (1927-1990), the first author who succeeded in composing a novel in the modern sense in mid-twentieth-century Iraq. Among the issues that the lecture will address are the changes that occurred in the extent and the characteristics of the theme of sexuality and love between Farman's times (the 1950s and 1960s) and the preceding generation of writers, in light of the taboo on treating this subject that had been in effect in Arabic literature until his days. Our basic assumption is that among the Communist writers in Iraq there is a connection between ideology and style, with respect to the choice of linguistic register, as well as between these two factors and the way these writers dealt with topics of love and gender. This assumption will be tested by way of a textual analysis of Farman's novels and short stories, as well as through an inquiry into the rhetorical and thematic devices that he uses in order to violate the norms that were customary in the conservative society from which he came. A number of books and papers have been written on Farman, but so far no one has dealt systematically with how he treated the topics of love and gender in his oeuvre as a whole. The present study's contribution consists of using his works as a prism in order to examine this tripartite connection in his writings, to wit, the combination of political and social ideology, language, and issues of love and gender.