#Hassan Blasim

[thepersonalwords]

There's no need to kick him in the balls for him to tell the story honestly and impartially, because the dead are usually honest, even the bastards among them.

Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[arablit]

Forthcoming June 2024: Classic Fiction, Poetry of Trauma, Short Fiction, & More

As always, if you know of books we’ve missed, please put them in the comments or email us at info@arablit.org. A Nose and Three Eyes, by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, tr. Jonathan Smolin (Hoopoe Fiction) From the publisher: It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it…

[valoniel]

applepi00

9 people you would like to get to know better

Tagged by @applepi00, thanks!

3 ships:

HakkaixGojyo (TenpouxKenren) - Saiyuki. What can I say? They're the Fated Guys. How can you not love this pairing, this ship dynamic? The fussy schoolteacher and the chainsmoking playboy find each other in a world gone chaotic in the shadow of the apocalypse. They were my first real, true, I'mma-write-fic-about-this ship. They've spent 500 years finding each other. Tough to beat.

Sokouku - Bungou Stray Dogs. Naturally, skk has to be on the list, right? Irresistible! I love a love affair that comes with a smack in the chops for good measure. Anyway, I'm a sucker for that kind of unequivocal trust, even when it's covered in idiocy.

MikoRei - K. Remember what I said about a smack in the chops? Well, MikotRei's got it. Their braincells are allergic to each other. They're deeply dippy about each other, and mad about it. Also, cue me up for that fucking tragedy and angst, yo. We've never written a single fic for this pairing, but we have hundreds of thousand of words of RP to Fix It.

Last Song: Details Kill by Juliet Ruin. This is one of my sister's bands (listen, they actually do kick ass, you should look them up on spotify or youtube or wev), and since we just went to a live show last night, I'm grooving. Personal favourite song by JR is Fight to Win, but this is the last one that I was listening to today.

Last Movie: Went to see the 1970s Bollywood movie Don a couple of weeks back. It was a good time!

Currently Reading: A shit ton of literature coming out of the Global War on Terror, actually. Good ones have been Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, Look: Poems by Solmaz Sharif, and The Corpse Exhibition by Hassan Blasim. A ton of literary theory relating to the mechanical image. Grad school's wild.

Currently Watching: Nearing the end of a rewatch of Alchemy of Souls.

Currently Craving: BIBIMBAP. In the stone bowl, so takeout's not going to cut it, unfortunately. Lots of gochujang. I waaaaaaant.

I'mma just tag everyone who wants to do the thing, 'cause I just don't have that many moots, lol

[contro-futuro]

10 libri che andrebbero letti secondo me (oltre al must Realismo Capitalista di Mark Fisher, che tutte le persone nate dopo il 1990 dovrebbero leggere):

- La cronologia dell’acqua, Lidia Yuknavitch

- Insegnare a trasgredire, bell hooks

- Il libro delle mie vite, Aleksandar Hemon

- Libertà: casa, prigione, esilio, il mondo, Yassin al-Haj Saleh

- Allah 99, Hassan Blasim

- Quando abbiamo smesso di capire il mondo, Benjamin Labatut

- Non siamo rifugiati, Agus Morales

- Davanti al dolore degli altri, Susan Sontag

- Io sono un black bloc: Poesia e pratica della sovversione sociale

- Elogio della disobbedienza civile, Goffredo Fofi

[fruitys]

book recommendations? 💘

ive been reading arabic literature lately so thats p much all i can recommend now 😭 im reading Men in the Sun by Ghassan Khanafani rn he's a palestinian writer so i definitely recommend anything by him. And also anything by Hassan Blasim especially his short stories so The Iraqi Christ or Madman of freedom square theyre so so good, idk why i cant find his novels in english tho lol thats fucked up umm what else.. zayni barakat by gamal ghitani is one of my fave books too i reread it recently

[patricia-von-arundel]

The books currently looking beseechingly up at me from my cart:

Within These Walls (Ania Ahlborn)

A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

Shipwrecks (Akira Yoshimura)

Frankenstein in Baghdad (Ahmed Saadawi)

Nazareth Hill (Ramsey Campbell)

Between Two Fires (Christopher Buehlman) (this may or may not have been one of the reasons I ranted about medieval horror always being Black Death...) (but I still desperately want to read it!)

The House Next Door (Anne Rivers Siddon)

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (Mariana Enriquez)

Mouthful of Birds (Samanta Schweblin)

Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)

Flowers of Mold (Ha Seong-Nan)

I Remember You (Yrsa Sigurdardottir)

Tender is the Flesh (Agustina Bazterrica)

Eileen (Ottessa Moshfegh)

The Shapeshifters (Stepan Spjut)

Hex (Thomas Olde Heuvelt)

The Corpse Exhibition (Hassan Blasim)

Her Body and Other Parties (Carmen Maria Machado)

The Last One (Alexandra Oliva)

The Twenty Days of Turin (Giorgio De Maria)

The Ancestor (Danielle Trussoni)

The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter)

Get in Trouble (Kelly Link)

Moon of the Crusted Snow (Waubgeshig Rice)

I Have a Bad Feeling About This (Jeff Strand)

The Hunger (Alma Katsu)

Apartment 16 (Adam Nevill)

The only authors on the list I've read are Adam Nevill, Jack Ketchum, and Ramsey Campbell. Someone please tell me half of these are just awful and not even worth considering? 😅

I'm trying to expand my reading beyond the obvious and the well-known, especially looking towards queer authors, women, and authors in translation (especially those from languages/cultures not as frequently encountered in the genre in English). For the last, I'm also considering the two volumes of The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories.

I'm going to starve.

Or I can try to figure out how to make a book stew...

[fairy-lovelace]

2023;

read this year;

books;

— of mice and men by john steinbeck — come close by sappho — galatea by madeline miller — o-gin by akutagawa ryūnosuke — antigone by sophocles — shakuntala by khalidasa — a little incident by lu hsun — the crane by hwang sun-won — fountains in the rain by mishima yukio — the abandoned village by hassan blasim — karma by khushwant singh — things fall apart by chinua achebe — the father (singaporean story) — twilight in jakarta by mochtar lubis

poems;

— labor pains by yosano akiko — a bone by nakahara chūya — sad morning by nakahara chūya — self-destruction by nakahara chūya — exhaustion by nakahara chūya — to the hour of death by nakahara chūya — half my life by nakahara chūya — finale by nakahara chūya — the eve of st. agnes by john keats — la belle dame sans merci by john keats — lamia by john keats — ode to psyche by john keats — ode to a grecian urn by john keats — a litany for survival by audre lorde — to emilia viviani by percy shelley — time by percy shelley — to— by percy shelley — to mary wollenstonecraft godwin by percy shelley — the rooster and the fox by jean de la fontaine — the passionate shepherd to his love by christopher marlowe — the nymph's reply to the shepherd by walter raleigh — beowulf — pamana by jose corazon de jesus — the road not taken by robert frost — one art by elizabeth bishop

graphic novels;

N/A

[rideretremando]

“Ai vecchi tempi, quando i nostri occhi erano lenti di ingrandimento, una luna gigantesca si ergeva sopra i tetti delle case, e noi volevamo romperla con una pietra”.

Hassan Blasim, Il Cristo iracheno

[pithia]

Knowledge and imagination are the life buoy and the extra lung for breathing outside the walls of a tainted reality.

Hassan Blasim

[arablit]

‘Egypt + 100’: Fictions on the Future of Public Space

By M Lynx Qualey Each anthology of near-future fiction in Comma Press’s “Futures Past” series has had a distinctly different flavor. The stories in Iraq + 100, ed. Hassan Blasim, are set in 2103, a hundred years after the disastrous US-led invasion, and many of them map the catastrophic aftereffects of this war.  Palestine + 100, ed. Basma Ghalayini, is set a hundred years after the 1948 Nakba,…

[rhetoricandlogic]

Iraq + 100

The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq

Edited Hassan Blasim

Release Date: September 12, 2017

Anytime the opportunity arises to experience something new and unique, I advise you to embrace it. But I must warn you, not all of these will be easily categorized. As a matter of fact, sometimes the experience will not just be enlightening, but also challenging. Iraq + 100: The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq is more than an anthology of new voices in science fiction. It is a testament to mankind’s willpower and tenacity even in the face of certain destruction. But, and this is a huge but, it is far more than even that. This book defies contemporary concepts of what sci-fi is by adding additional layers of history, laced with emotional turmoil.

Ten stories, ten voices. A slender paperback of barely 200 pages. That is essentially all I knew going into this book. I prepared myself for science fiction stories that were going to have a different tone to them. This is, after all, the first anthology of its kind to come from Iraq. Even so, I was ill-prepared for the sheer emotion that this tome evoked …nay, that it emanated. Beneath these tales are written the pain of people that have known war for so long that many cannot remember a time that death and despair were not a part of it.

Each story is unique, but throughout them all there is a thread of the same emotion: hope. Every author herein seems destined to spread hope. Hope for their nation, hope for their people, hope for the human race. While each one of these short stories takes place a hundred years in the future, these are feelings and thoughts that are commonplace here and now. Not that this is necessarily a feelgood compilation. No, it runs the gauntlet of sentiments, forcing the reader to reevaluate constantly.

A few of the tales deal with a post-apocalyptic setting where the struggle for sustenance takes precedence over all else. There seemed to be a latent anger, repressed for so long, that festered between the lines on the pages. In fact, this is volatile enough that it will set readers on edge while winding their way to the root of the story. As an American, there are several instances that it seems my country is being made the enemy, but no sooner do I find myself defensive than the author refines the rhetoric, enabling the reader to see that it was never a pointed finger but rather an outstretched hand. After so much oppression, idealism may actually have seemed a foreign concept.

I would say the most brutally honest of the bunch was The Corporal, wherein a former Iraqi soldier appeared a hundred years after he died. His outdated concepts and feelings brand him an outsider even as he tries to reconcile what was with what is. The biggest takeaway I found was that in a sufficiently futuristic and secular society, religion would appear to be akin to terrorism. Not in its tenets, but in the passion and zeal that some seem to embody.

The story Kuszib takes a look at not just Iraq, but the world as a whole after otherworldly invaders assume mastery of our planet. More of a treatise on how all creatures view those lower on the food chain than them, this tale is a poignant reminder of how humans have destroyed far more than we have created. Even the empathy shown by the main characters is overshadowed by their needs to be comfortable at the expense of others. Graphic and darkly humorous, the author used the story to attempt to create a greater awareness of others. I did, in fact, find it extremely thought provoking.

The final story was Najufa and was by far the most emotional of the ten, at least to me. A simple journey with a relative turns out to be far more than what the reader expects. Time has moved forward but historical monuments remain, a physical representation of what has come before. But in this story a century from now, not everything must remain physical; in fact, much does not. This one caused me much introspection and was heart-wrenching on a multitude of levels. Were I to say anything else, then the story would be ruined.

If you have not yet understood, these ten tales are stories of sorrow, hope, and history all recorded in different ways by different writers. Each one seems to hold a certain pride in their country, though they show a knowledge that not all of the leaders in their past have been benevolent. A few even explore oppression in the future, speaking to the parallels with the past. As with all compilations, some appealed to me more than others. But, unusually, each offered me something in the way of knowledge. Most importantly, I felt the raw emotions of a people who have only recently been allowed to publicly dream of a brighter future and that alone would make this book a worthy read. Luckily, however, there are a myriad of other reasons why you should read this. You might even discover a new level of compassion or empathy for a war-torn people who stand among the ashes of their forefathers and dare to look up.

Let me leave you with my favorite turn of phrase from the story Baghdad Syndrome, as it seems the most fitting here: “…the language was difficult to unpack but the pain flowing from it was undoubtedly real.”

In 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.

[7r0773r]

The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq by Hassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright

Abu Hadid knocked back what remained of the bottle of arak. He put his face close to mine and, with the calm of someone high on hashish, gave me this advice: "Listen, Mahdi. I've seen all kinds of problems in my life, and I know that one day I'll run out of luck. You're sixteen, and today I'm going to teach you how to be a lion. In this world you need to be street-smart. Whether you die today or in thirty years, it doesn't make any difference. It's today that matters and whether you can see the fear in people's eyes. People who are frightened will give you everything. If someone tells you, 'God forbids it' or 'That's wrong,' for example, give him a kick up the ass, because that god's full of shit. That's their god, not your god. You are your own god, and this is your day. There's no god without followers or crybabies willing to die of hunger or suffer in his name. You have to learn how to make yourself God in this world, so that people lick your ass while you shit down their throats. Don't open your mouth today, not a word. You come with me, dumb as a lamb. Understand, dickhead?"

He thumped the arak bottle against the wall and aimed a friendly punch hard into my nose.

We walked through the darkness of the muddy lanes. The wretched houses were catching their breath after receiving a whipping from the storm. Inside them the people were sleeping and dreaming. Everything was soaked and knocked out of place. The wind that had toyed with the labyrinth of lanes all evening picked up strength then finally left with a bitter chill hanging over the place—this sodden neighborhood where I would live and die. Many times I imagined the neighborhood as if it were some offspring of my mother's. It smelled that way and was just as miserable. I don't recall ever seeing my mother as a human being. She would always be weeping and wailing in the corner of the kitchen like a dog tied up to be tormented. My father would assail her with a hail of insults, and when her endurance broke, she would whine aloud, "Why, good Lord? Why? Take me and save me."

Only then would my father stand up, take the cord out of his headdress, and whip her nonstop for half an hour, spitting at her throughout. (The Killers and the Compass, pp. 13-14)

***

Before going into the restaurant he'd witnessed a group of children standing at the traffic lights waiting for green. They stood in two lines with two teachers, one at the front and one at the back. He guessed how many children there were—twelve, of the future hope variety. His mind wagged its tail with delight. They would no doubt be doctors, engineers, murderers, poets, alcoholics, and unemployed people, twelve children being the new cover of an old story. His mind slowly moved forward, and he began to smell the stench of death. Those are our children and the ones who will visit our graves, he said. Twelve ideas crossing the street, cheerful and energetic. They are the powerhouse of the future. (That Inauspicious Smile, p. 174)

[blogseparataarabe]

Literatura iraquí traducida al español: 10 autores

Literatura iraquí traducida al español. Un pequeño listado para quien quiera adentrarse en este país a través de sus letras #LiteraturaÁrabe #Iraq

La primera lectura del Club de lectura Separata árabe será Los jardines del presidente de Muhsin Al-Ramli, tal y como han decidido los lectores con su voto. Por este motivo, me he lanzado a hacer un listado de la literatura iraquí traducida al español. Quizá, más adelante, publique otro listado hablando sobre autores iraquíes destacados cuya obra no está publicada en nuestro idioma. Con este…

[somehowwow]

[torpublishinggroup]

Two contributors to the groundbreaking anthology Iraq + 100 reflect on science fiction and Arabic literature.