The Madman of Freedom Square
Hassan Blasim: The Madman of Freedom Square
Translated from Arabic by Jonathan Wright, Comma Press, November 2009
From hostage video-makers in Baghdad to human traffickers in Istanbul, refugees surviving by their wits in the forests of Serbia, to a man attempting to bury his old identity, despite bad dreams, in the streets of Amsterdam, Blasim's stories present an uncompromising view of Europe at a time of momentous upheaval: coming to terms with the consequences of the Iraq War, and being redefined by that all important, and as yet un-voiced new protagonist: the refuge. Blasim's style blends the phantasmagoric with the outright bleak, twisting and subverting readers' expectations in an unflinching comedy of the macabre (Roald Dahl meets Children of Men!). And yet for all its despair and darkness, what lingers longest, more than the haunting images of war, or the madness of those who'd benefit from it, is the spirit of defiance, the indefatigable courage of characters keeping faith with the ingenuity and tenacity of human intelligence.
As a writer and filmmaker, Hassan has been unable to live or write in his native city, of Baghdad, and has spent all of his adult life working in one form of exile or other (first under Sadam Hussein and now thanks to the ongoing the civil war), often using a pseudonym, for fear of his family's safety. Yet his family is back in Baghdad as are many of his writing concerns.
Hassan Blasim was born in Baghdad in 1973, and studied at the Academy of Cinematic Arts. In 2004, a year into the war, he fled to Finland. As well as the director of numerous short films and one Kurdish feature film, Hassan is a poet and short story writer with work published in various magazines, websites and anthologies, including Prospect magazine and Madinah. He is a co-editor of the Arabic literary website www.iraqstory.com.
Jonathan Wright studied Arabic at Oxford University in the 1970s and has spent 18 of the past 30 years in the Arab world, mostly as a journalist with the international news agency Reuters. His first major literary translation was of Khaled el-Khamissi's best-selling book Taxi, published in English by Aflame Books in 2008.
Translated from Arabic by Jonathan Wright, Comma Press, November 2009
From hostage video-makers in Baghdad to human traffickers in Istanbul, refugees surviving by their wits in the forests of Serbia, to a man attempting to bury his old identity, despite bad dreams, in the streets of Amsterdam, Blasim's stories present an uncompromising view of Europe at a time of momentous upheaval: coming to terms with the consequences of the Iraq War, and being redefined by that all important, and as yet un-voiced new protagonist: the refuge. Blasim's style blends the phantasmagoric with the outright bleak, twisting and subverting readers' expectations in an unflinching comedy of the macabre (Roald Dahl meets Children of Men!). And yet for all its despair and darkness, what lingers longest, more than the haunting images of war, or the madness of those who'd benefit from it, is the spirit of defiance, the indefatigable courage of characters keeping faith with the ingenuity and tenacity of human intelligence.
As a writer and filmmaker, Hassan has been unable to live or write in his native city, of Baghdad, and has spent all of his adult life working in one form of exile or other (first under Sadam Hussein and now thanks to the ongoing the civil war), often using a pseudonym, for fear of his family's safety. Yet his family is back in Baghdad as are many of his writing concerns.
Hassan Blasim was born in Baghdad in 1973, and studied at the Academy of Cinematic Arts. In 2004, a year into the war, he fled to Finland. As well as the director of numerous short films and one Kurdish feature film, Hassan is a poet and short story writer with work published in various magazines, websites and anthologies, including Prospect magazine and Madinah. He is a co-editor of the Arabic literary website www.iraqstory.com.
Jonathan Wright studied Arabic at Oxford University in the 1970s and has spent 18 of the past 30 years in the Arab world, mostly as a journalist with the international news agency Reuters. His first major literary translation was of Khaled el-Khamissi's best-selling book Taxi, published in English by Aflame Books in 2008.