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The Iraqi Christ

Hassan Blasim

Translated by Jonathan Wright

The Iraqi Christ
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Arabic, Finnish, Translation, War writings
Imprint: Comma Press
Publisher: Comma Press
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  • 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. Taking his cues from Kafka, his prose shines a dazzling light into the dark absurdities of Iraq’s recent past and the torments of its countless refugees. The subject of this, his second collection, is primarily trauma and the curious strategies human beings adopt to process it (including, of course, fiction). The result is a masterclass in metaphor – a new kind of story-telling, forged in the crucible of war, and just as shocking.
    Hassan Blasim
    Hassan Blasim is a poet, filmmaker and short story writer. Born in Baghdad in 1973, he studied at the city's Academy of Cinematic Arts, where two of his films Gardenia (screenplay & director) and White Clay (screenplay) won the Academy's Festival Award for Best Work in their respective years. In 1998 ... read more
    Awards won by Hassan Blasim Long-listed, 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (The Madman of Freedom Square) Winner, 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (The Iraqi Christ )
    'It is the first time in the prize’s 24-year history that it has gone to an Arab writer and also the first time that a short story collection has been victorious.'
    The Bookseller
    Praise for Hassan Blasim  'Blasim pitches everyday horror into something almost gothic... his taste for the surreal can be Gogol-like.'
    The Independent
     'Crisp and shocking... Too febrile and macabre to file under reportage, this cruel, funny and unsettling debut has hooks and twists that will lodge in any mind.'
    The Guardian
      'Blasim moves adeptly between surreal, internalised states of mind and ironic commentary on Islamic extremism and the American invasion... excellent.'
    The Metro
       'At first you receive it with the kind of shocked applause you'd award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You're quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime. At his best Blasim produces a corrosive mixture of broken lyricism, bitter irony & hyper-realism which topples into the fantastic & the quotidian in the same reading moment.'
    M John Harrison blog.
     'The news machine has shifted its attention to Afghanistan, and Iraqis are being left to fend for themselves. Blasim's collection reminds us that anything could still happen there. Iraq's story must still be told, and we need Iraqi voices like Blasim's to tell it.'
    Intelligent Life
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