Böcker av Hassan Blasim

One of NPR's Best Books of 2017!A groundbreaking anthology of science fiction from Iraq that will challenge your perception of what it means to be "The Other""History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard."-Operation DanielIn a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like.Now try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control.Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion?Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be "The Other", this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

Chess-playing people-traffickers, suicidal photographers, absurdist sound sculptors, cat-loving rebel sympathisers, murderous storytellers... The characters in Hassan Blasim's debut novel are not the inventions of a wild imagination, but real-life refugees and people whose lives have been devastated by war. Interviewed by Hassan Owl, an aspiring Iraq-born writer, they become the subjects of an online art project, a blog that blurs the boundaries between fiction and autobiography, reportage and the novel. Framed by an email correspondence with the mysterious Alia, a translator of the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, the project leads us through the bars, brothels and bathhouses of Hassan's past and present in a journey of trauma, violence, identity and desire. Taking its conceit from the Islamic tradition that says God has 99 names, the novel trains a kaleidoscopic lens on the multiplicity of experiences behind Europe's so-called 'migrant crisis', and asks how those who have been displaced might find themselves again.

From legends of the desert to horrors of the forest, Blasim's stories blend the fantastic with the everyday, the surreal with the all-too-real. The result is a masterclass in metaphor - a new kind of story-telling, forged in the crucible of war, and just as shocking. Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014.

Iraq + 100 poses a question to ten Iraqi writers: what might your country look like in the year 2103 - a century after the disastrous American- and British-led invasion, and 87 years down the line from its current, nightmarish battle for survival?

From human trafficking in the forests of Serbia, to the nightmares of an exile trying to embrace a new life in Amsterdam, Blasim's stories present an uncompromising view of the West's relationship with Iraq, taking in everything from the Iran-Iraq War through to the Occupation, offering a haunting critique of the post-war refugee experience.