Stories from a century after the invasion
Klappentext: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 Britsh-led invasion, and 87 years down the line from its current, nightmarish battle for survival? How might the effects of that one intervention reach across a century of repercussions, and shape the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens? Might Iraq have finally escaped the cycle of invasion and violence triggered by 2003 and, if so, what would a new, free Iraq look like?
Covering a range of appraoches – from science fiction, to allegory, to magic realism – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to explore the nation's hopes and fears in equal measure. Along the way a new aesthetic for the "Iraqi fantastical" begins to emerge: we meet time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues, macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids, and all of them buoyed by a dark, inventive humour that, in itself, offers hope.
Über die Autorin / über den Autor:Hassan Blasim was born in Baghdad in 1973, where he studied at the city's Academy of Cinematic Arts. In 1998, he was advised to leave Baghdad, as his documentary critiques of life under Saddam had put him at risk. He fled to Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan), where he continued to make films, including the feature-length drama Wounded Camera, under the Kurdish pesudonym "Ouazad Osman". In 2004, after years of travelling illegally through Europe as a refugee, he finally settled in Finland. His first story to appear in print was for Comma's anthology Madinah (2008), edited by Joumana Haddad, which was followed by two commissioned collections, The Madman of Freedom Square (2009) and The Iraqi Christ (2013) – all translated into English by Jonathan Wright. The latter collection won the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Hassan's stories have now been published in over 20 languages.
Mit Beiträgen von Hassan Blasim, Anoud, Ali Bader, Diaa Jubaili, Mortada Gzar, Zhraa Alhaboby, Khalid Kaki, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Jalal Hassan, Ibrahim al-Marashi, Ra Page.
Preis: CHF 20.50
