Hasan Blásim Knihy

Hassan Blásim sa narodil v roku 1973 v Iraku, kde študoval na Akadémii filmových umení. Potom ako bol niekoľkokrát uväznený, mu v roku 1998 jeho profesori poradili, aby odišiel z Bagdadu. Jeho politicky angažované a voči režimu kritické filmy vyvolali pozornosť irackých tajných služieb. Najprv utiekol do Sulejmaníje, kde sa pri natáčaní filmu Zranená kamera v kurdskej oblasti v severnom Iraku dostal do problémov. Potom niekoľko rokov cestoval ilegálne po Európe, až kým sa nakoniec usadil vo Fínsku. Jeho poviedkový debut Blázon z Námestia slobody (2009) bol v roku 2010 navrhnutý na ocenenie Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. To však nakoniec získal až za druhú zbierku poviedok Iracký Kristus v roku 2014. Bolo to prvýkrát v histórii, čo ocenenie získal arabský autor. Dielo Hassana Blásima je preložené do dvadsiatich jazykov napriek tomu, že v niektorých arabských krajinách je zakázaným autorom.Brilantné a znepokojujúce... divoké a nezabudnuteľné. Wall Street JournalOdvážne a ukrutné. The Huffington PostNočná mora násilia a teroru. Guernica Magazine.

This collection of stories explores the chaos of post-invasion Baghdad. A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by a suicide bomber into swapping places. A composer of crossword puzzles survives a car-bomb, only to find himself haunted by the spirit of one of it's victims. A victim of looting flees armed robbers but falls into a deep hole, at the bottom of which sits a djinn, and the corpse of a Russian soldier from a completely different war.

First published in Arabic by al-Mutawassit, Milan, 2018.

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?

A mysterious black crate arrives at an ISIS command centre in the heart of occupied Mosul, leaving the soldiers and their captives guessing at its contents... A refugee travels to a remote ‘Northern’ town to study race relations, only to discover one of its bridge-building initiatives is, in fact, a trap... Drifting from job to job in a corrupt, militia-run Baghdad, a young daydreamer is asked to spy on a protest movement he finds himself entirely sympathising with... The characters in Hassan Blasim’s latest collection all find themselves in impossible positions – from the ISIS cook working undercover to retrieve ancient manuscripts from a desecrated site, to the refugee in Northern Europe unable to process the devastating dislocation of exile. Violence, intolerance and insecurity stalk them at every turn. And yet, for all their trauma, Hassan’s stories – strung through with intrigue and absurdist humour – are somehow able to draw us in and help us appreciate the infinite complexity implicit in even the most black-and-white contexts. ‘Perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive’ – The Guardian ‘Brilliant and disturbing... bitter, furious and unforgettable’ – The Wall Street Journal on The Iraqi Christ