| Title | : | Iraq + 100: stories from a century after the invasion |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1905583664 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781905583669 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 182 |
| Publication | : | First published October 17, 2016 |
Covering a range of approaches – 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: thus we meet time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues, macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids, and all the time buoyed by a dark, inventive humour that, in itself, offers hope.
Iraq + 100: stories from a century after the invasion Reviews
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ربما كانت الفكرة جيدة، لكن المحصلة النهائية مخيبة للآمال
بعيدا عن الحاضر بتداعياته القاسية، تركز تلك القصص على تخيل عالم العراق في المستقبل، وتحديدا بعد مائة سنة من الآن، أو أقل قليلا باعتبار أن الكتاب صدر من عدة سنوات
البداية مع المقدمة والتي أدعى فيها المحرر أن أدب الخيال العلمي والفاتنازيا لم ينال الاهتمام الكافي من قبل الكتاب العرب، ويبدو أن المحرر وصل إلى ذلك التعميم المغلوط بناء على دراسته للأدب العراقي فقط، فأدب الخيال العلمي والفاتنازيا بات ينتشر كالنار في الهشيم لدى الأدباء الجدد وبخاصة من مصر، وتكاد معظم الأعمال الأدبية الجديدة تنحصر في دائرة أعمال الخيال العلمي والفانتازيا ومعها أدب الرعب، وربما تكون أعمال أحمد خالد توفيق التي بدأت بالظهور منذ ربع قرن تقريبا هي سبب ذلك الزخم
القصص نفسها خالفت المعروف عن فن القصة القصيرة، فالنصوص طويلة للغاية وبها قدر كبير من المبالغة في الوصف والاستطراد وبشكل يتنافى مع فنيات القصة القصيرة التي تعتمد على الاختزال والتكثيف، والمقدمة دائما غير مشوقة ولا تشجع القارئ على الاسترسال في القراءة، كما أن تسلسل الأحداث في معظم القصص بطئ نسبيا فيتشرب إليك شعور بالملل لكما تقدمت في القراءة، فضلا عن أن الحبكات نفسها لم تكن مشوقة، وكثرة استخدام الألفاظ البذيئة، مع ترجمة ضعيفة للقصص المكتوبة باللغة الإنجليزية
باختصار لم تعجبني سوى لمحات بسيطة في قصة هنا أو هناك، لكن كل القصص كانت في المجمل أقل من المتوسطة -
3.5 Stars. Ten short stories by Iraqi writers envisioning Iraq 100 years after the US-led invasion. I love short speculative fiction, but I was mostly interested in this book because I have a huge blind spot in my knowledge about Iraq. Everything I've read about Iraq has been from the perspective of the American military or Western journalists! I had trouble nailing down the central message of some of the stories, but I recognize this book's importance. These futuristic tales provide insight into Iraq's present-day situation from a much-needed perspective.
The best science fiction, they say, tells us more about the context it’s written in than the future it’s trying to predict. The future may offer a blank canvas onto which writers can project their concerns, in new and abstract ways, but the concerns themselves are still very much ‘of their time’.
In the introduction, Hassan Blasim explains that it was a challenge to collect stories for this compilation because science-fiction isn't usually written in Iraq. Religious extremism and constant conflict don't exactly provide a fertile ground for imaginative expression. This unique assignment allowed the writers to look at Iraq through "the long lens of speculative fiction." While these stories are set one hundred years in the future, the 2003 invasion is never far from the writers' minds. In some of the stories, Iraq is still occupied by foreign forces or grappling with the effects of the neverending conflict. In other stories, the war is so far behind them that the younger generation can't even comprehend it. Each short story is written by a different author, but common threads run through many of them: suspicion of religion and strongman leaders, the selling off of everything, and the loss of history by either governmental decree or as an act of survival. In many of the stories, the United States has succumbed to its own problems with extremism. Futuristic technology is featured, but what interested me most were the humanistic aspects.
My favorite stories are bolded. For the stories that were more opaque to me, I just noted the parts that struck me as most important.
• Kahramana by Anoud - Sixteen-year-old Kahramana bravely escapes an arranged marriage to the head of the Islamic Empire. She flees to the American occupiers for safety, only to be used as propaganda and carelessly tossed aside when she outlives her usefulness.Violence sculpts you and in this case turns you into half a statue. Violence is the most brutal sculptor mankind has ever produced. A barbaric sculptor: no one wants to learn lessons from the works he has carved.
• The Gardens of Babylon by Hassan Blasim - The narrator designs smart-games based on old stories. He'd prefer to design original smart-games, because he doesn't see how the past has any relevance to him. With the help of a hallucinogenic drug to cure his creative block, he sees he has an unexpected connection to the past. Through the narrator's research, we see the constantly shifting alliances and senseless, escalating violence that tore the nation apart.
• The Corporal by Ali Bader - An Iraqi soldier who was optimistic about the U.S. invasion is killed by an American soldier. After one hundred years in limbo, he convinces God to let him return to Iraq in place of a prophet. The world the soldier returns to is a completely different place; the United States is gripped by religious extremism, while Iraq is a secular utopia. The reversal of circumstances puts the resurrected soldier in a dicey situation.
• The Worker by Diaa Jubaili - The religious strongman who now leads Iraq urges the citizens to remain calm and appreciate their circumstances because their suffering could be much worse. As a mysterious figure wanders through the streets collecting corpses, we witness the full extent of suffering.
• The Day by Day Mosque by Mortada Gzar- People have resorted to selling their own snot. This one went completely over my head! I think the important parts are the commodification of everything (including biological waste), the ridiculousness of the urban improvement projects, and the absurdity of George W. Bush's statement that "day by day, the Iraqi people are closer to freedom."You see, if you’re a sufferer of Baghdad Syndrome, you know that nothing has ever driven us, or our ancestors, quite as much as the syndrome of loving Baghdad.
• Baghdad Syndrome by Zhraa Alhaboby - Architect Sudra Sen Sumer is diagnosed with Baghdad Syndrome, a disease that renders its victims blind. The specter of blindness makes him passionate about his latest commission to design a city square, because it might be the last project he's able to see. Haunted by a vivid dream of a woman's desperate plea to find her lover, he sets out to find the statue of
Scheherazade that was looted from the square many decades ago and return it to its rightful home. Just as the woman was forcibly separated from her lover and the statue removed from the square, Iraqis were forced to flee their homes and deny their family history to survive. I think the title is a play on Stockholm Syndrome. Despite the horrors the Iraqi people have endured, they can't abandon their beloved homeland.‘History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard.’
• Operation Daniel by Khalid Kaki - All audio recordings of forbidden languages are banned "to protect the state’s present from the threat of the past." Anyone possessing forbidden material is ground down into diamonds to adorn the Venerable Benefactor's accessories. But can the past truly be erased?To compose himself, Ur reminded himself of how pathetically humans had failed to work out the basics of intergalactic space flight, driving back his momentary fascination with the book and restoring his old feelings of revulsion towards these creatures. It was only when this feeling of superiority had a physical manifestation—a shudder of revulsion—that balance to his psyche was restored.
• Kuszib by Hassan Abdulrazzak - The extraterrestrial occupiers of Iraq are farming humans. The alien invaders easily rationalize their cruelty to the "uncivilized" humans. Ona realizes that some of the criticisms of humans could apply to her own species, but her superiors assure her that the humans are much worse. Ona feels sympathy for the poor humans, but she determines her own desires supersede the humans' autonomy. This story is really strange (tentacles!), but the message is clear. It shows an invader deciding they know what's best for the occupied territories and how they exert their will over those they deem beneath them."We call it the world whether it is our own world or that which we no longer know, the way it was before the year 2021. As if nothing changed."
• The Here and Now Prison by Jalal Hasan - Everything from the past, including the dead, is relegated to the Old City, a place that can only be accessed by scholars. A young man suffering from a disease sneaks into the area to visit his dead mother. His girlfriend follows him and discovers the past is more vibrant than their present "where everything you touched became obsolete because you touched it, everything you said became a lie because you said it." This story deals with the limitations of language in describing the state of things and how that makes us grow accustomed to bad circumstances without even realizing it.
• Najufa by Ibrahim Al-Marashi - A man takes a pilgrimage to Iraq with his grandfather Isa. Isa has never visited his ancestral homeland because of his own father's experiences, so his grandson hopes to convince him there's more to Najufa than bad memories. As Isa shares his memories with his grandson, we learn of the sectarian conflicts that consumed people after the 2003 invasion and the unbreakable spiritual connection one has to their homeland. There's a passing reference to the Christian Assembly of Kansas and Arkansas (CAKA), a domestic terrorist group in the futuristic U.S. that rivals ISIS.‘We’ve changed so much,’ Samir mused, as if asking himself a question.
‘The world changes and all we can do is try to keep up,’ Helen offered.
‘But have we changed for the better?’ Samir asked. (The Here and Now Prison)
This was a challenging read for me, but it was well worth my time. What I saw most in these stories is a yearning for a peaceful future. I didn't fully understand every story, but that might be because of lack of knowledge about the region. Many of the stories came into sharper focus as I read more nonfiction about modern-day Iraq. Some of the strange little details were born from reality, such as the invaders disorienting the natives by renaming all the streets in "Kuszib." These fictional stories also made my nonfiction reading even more impactful. After the compilation of these stories, the future of Iraq grew even more uncertain. Blasim reminds us in the "Afterword" that many of the stories were written before June 2014 when
Iraq's second largest city Mosul fell to IS. The Iraqi army recaptured Mosul in July 2017, but there's still a long road ahead. (Washington Post:
ISIS is near defeat in Iraq. Now comes the hard part)
If you are looking for more books by authors from the region, you might be interested in Ayub Nuri's memoir
Being Kurdish in a Hostile World.
A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War was also very educational. It's written by a Canadian journalist and is set in Syria, but it focuses on Iraqi refugees and familiarized me with some of Iraq's history.
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I received this book for free from Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It's available now! -
“𝑊𝑎𝑟 𝑤𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒, 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑜𝑦, 𝑤𝑎𝑟 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑟. 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑤𝑎𝑦?“
Having read Palestine +100, a collection of short stories on what Palestine would look like a hundred years after the Nakba, I was delighted to find another book from the “+100” series. My delight faded, however, the minute I read the first couple stories. I immediately knew what the rest of the book was going to be like, and it was upon suffering through the third story that I realised I was right. What a waste of time.
Iraq +100 was an incredibly disappointing and pointless read. Where I expected originality, creativity and intrigue, I was met with vulgarity, blasphemy and obscenity. As with any collection of stories, you’re not expected to like or engage with every single one. I did expect, however, to enjoy at least a handful of these stories, but I can honestly say I just about liked one, and that was the very last story. It certainly wasn’t good enough to redeem the book in any way, though it was written (or perhaps translated?) well enough to be read without grimacing, and it wasn’t as overtly vulgar as some others.
The stories themselves are set in various places across Iraq and deal with a variety of dystopian issues and futuristic concepts such as time travel, food shortage/cannibalism, implanting technology into the human body and the downfall of amreeka.
There were a couple of stories that really made my stomach churn and I won’t detail them here because I physically can’t bring myself to type it out nor I don’t want anyone to suffer as I have suffered - not being dramatic, just extremely repulsed by how some think being graphic and disgusting - and bringing religious acts into it - is somehow creative and original. A lot of the stories had anti-theist/religion sentiment/mockery.
Would not recommend. -
2.5 stars. This was a somewhat slow read. There are a number of stories in this collection, all imagining what Iraq could be like in 100 years. A few of the stories felt like scifi, while a couple of others felt more like literary fiction. I particularly enjoyed the last story, which ended on a somewhat sad note.
Some of the stories felt uneven, or abrupt, and were at times sad, wistful, humorous (though more on the black humour side than anything). I found a couple of the stories also seemed to suggest that significant changes would not necessarily yet be in place, as Iraq would still be recovering from its many invasions over the years.
I don't normally comment on forewords and afterwords, but in this book's case I enjoyed both the forward and afterword, as these helped frame the intentions and mindsets of the authors.
I cannot say that I enjoyed reading every story in this collection, but I found the imaginings interesting. -
The overall premise on this book ("Iraq + 100 poses a question to contemporary Iraqi writers: what might your home city look like in the year 2103 – exactly 100 years after the disastrous American and British-led invasion of Iraq?") appealed to me - I'm a big fan of speculative fiction and literature in translation, and the premise is simply compelling on it's own.
Unfortunately I didn't feel that the execution lived up to the premise. There are some good pieces in here (
Hassan Blasim's contribution is good - and starts the collection on a high note - as is Baghdad Syndrome and Najufa), but the other's did not do much for me. I will note that the collection is not as dystopic as I would have expected - though there are certainly a few pieces in that tone - but the couple of actual utopic pieces didn't feel especially well realized, and didn't seem to spend enough time analyzing how Iraq would get to such a place in a fairly short 100 year timeframe. This feels like an important work - I think the intent here is great - I just wish the contents had more lived up to the fairly lofty expectations I had for the collection.
The introduction by
Hassan Blasim is good though - thankfully it's provided in full on the Tor website (
here) - so if you have a few minutes that's worth checking out. -
The premise of this slim collection held such promise... Ten Iraqi writers were asked: What might your country look like in the year 2103--a century after the disastrous American- and British-led invasion? The foreword perhaps cushions expectations when it quotes the journalist Mustafa Najjar commenting on the project: "The reluctance of Arab writers to address the future has long been a great mystery, at least to me. The walls of repression and censorship that confine Arab creativity so severely offer in themselves an ideal environment for writing about the future, a space that is free of the taboos that weigh on the past and the present."
In a sense, this qualifier caused me to be painfully aware of how awkward and constrained many of these stories seemed to me. Devoid of any real exposure to Iraqi literature, I don't really have any sort of "baseline" to determine whether these stories diverge from what might be called a "typical" Iraqi short story (or, if such a generalization is even possible). Mostly, they seemed pretty dystopic with a shared-but-dim hope for a peaceful future, a return to the ideals and grand history we only hear about from the Middle East's past. The two stories preceding the last one in the collection spoke the strongest to me ("Kuszib" and "The Here & Now Prison")--one paints a future in which humans are no longer the dominant species and the other deals with memory/identity and the intersection of technology.
I am glad I read this and in part, I almost felt obligated to do so as if the least I could do as a tax-paying citizen of the country that invaded Iraq was read these stories. My ignorance of this region and its culture is vast (and that's probably an understatement).
As I finished the book late last night around 1 in the morning, I decided to take a look at the news before calling it a night. The American embassy in Iraq had been closed as violent protests in the past few days had flared up. A U.S. drone strike had just taken out Iran's general Qassem Suleimani as he was driving away from the Baghdad airport. The flames of war are being fanned.
When the present is so hellish, I can't imagine the Iraqi people envision any future beyond day-to-day survival. -
In the introduction, editor Hassan Blasim explains that contemporary Iraqi literature typically sticks to realism and veers away from science fiction and fantasy. But he sees SFF as a way to imagine a different future, something he feels needs to happen more often. So he pitched the idea: what might your home city look like in the year 2103—exactly 100 years after the disastrous American and British-led invasion of Iraq? And the 10 stories from these Iraqi authors are the ones he chose to compile into this collection.
If you're interested in reading more about the philosophy behind this anthology, Tor has published
several
good
articles
that I recommend reading.
The authors explore many similar themes in these short stories.
"History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be hear." --goes a slogan from "Operation Daniel"
And in these stories history screams louder than the future. All but one or two of the stories are dystopias, depicting a government that dehumanizes, and often a populace that, even while recoiling from this dehumanization, learns to live with it. My favorite of these is the very first story, "Kahramana," where a teen girl tries to flee Iraq after gouging out the eye of her fiance, who also happens to be the ruler.
But my other favorite story from the collection presents a future that has both frightening and hopeful aspects--"Baghdad Syndrome" by Zhraa Alhabody. In this story, an architect quickly descending into blindness and hallucinations due to 'Baghdad Syndrome' attempts to discover what the woman in his hallucinations wants, and to recreate the statue of Scheherazade. Really interesting and focused story.
My favorite SFF and dystopias create rich characters struggling within their community and society, and that's why these two stood out as the strongest in the collection.
Some premises are more science-fictional than these, such as alien conquerors that harvest and eat people (Kuszib) and futurist, insect drugs (The Gardens of Babylon), but I preferred the ones with complex characterization over fantastical premises.
This collection is well worth reading, especially if you want to read diversely in SF (and you should want this), even though I only enjoyed a few of the stories. Some of them were so bizarre I had difficulty relating or determining what was going on, perhaps due to potential cultural and language barriers. But I would definitely enjoy reading more Iraqi SF, particularly from Anoud and Alhabody.
You can read my reviews for each story following. Thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Kahramana by Anoud: A satirical story about a woman (actually a teenager)--Kahramana--trying to flee Iraq after gouging out the eye of her fiance, who also happens to be the ruler. Well told commentary and story. 4/5
The Gardens of Babylon by Hassan Blasim: A very weird stream-of-conscious story about a guy who's supposed to write a video game based on a classic short story. To find inspiration, he takes futuristic drugs and goes to a pleasure house. I struggled knowing what was going on. 2/5
The Corporal by Ali Bader: A Corporal is killed and goes to heaven, but because he was killed trying to make peace with the Americans, he's put in limbo. But God decides to send him back to Iraq, and when he does, 100 years have passed, and the city is now a mecca of progress and humanity. 3/5
The Worker by Diaa Jubaili: A compilation of tragic past events, that a Governor uses as propaganda. Very strange story! 2/5
The Day by Day Mosque by Mortada Gzar: A brief synopsis of the life of Salman Day By. I just have no idea what happens in this story, and I reread it! 1/5
Baghdad Syndrome by Zhraa Alhabody: An architect diagnosed with Baghdad Syndrome--a future genetic abnormality that cause blindness and hallucinations--starts dreaming of a woman, and he must go on a quest to figure out who she is, and what connection she has to the statue he's been hired to build. I really enjoyed this one. Great connections to Scheherazade, and the main character is interesting. This could've been even longer--possibly a novel. There are several areas where the author summarized the protagonists findings, which could've been shown instead. And the character is interesting enough that I'd enjoy spending longer with him. 4/5
Operation Daniel by Khalid Kaki: The 'beloved' ruler has decreed that artifacts must be confiscated and those with artifacts 'archived'--or turned to ash and then to diamonds that encrust his clothes. Eww! 2.5/5
Kuszib by Hassan Abdulrazzak: An alien couple struggle with libido and marriage difficulties in a future where their alien race has taken over Earth and now harvest and eat people. Very weird! And another Ewww! 2.5/5
The Here and Now Prison by Jalal Hassan: Helen is infatuated with Samir, a fellow student, whose mother 'died' of some kind of disease, and was condemned to the 'old city,' or the 'exhibition.' 3/5
Najufa by Ibrahim al-Marashi: A future with droids and robots. 2/5 -
I received an advanced copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
"And to her, it seemed more attractive than anything this artificial world had to offer, this place where everything you touched became obsolete because you touched it, everything you said became a lie because you said it."
This collection was largely disappointing. Although this short story collection is advertised as science fiction, most of the stories read more like literary fiction, despite the supposed futuristic setting, and others were undeniably fantasy. I think this had most to do with the fact that the advanced technology and other hallmarks of science fiction, when they were present, were often used in the stories more as a fancy backdrop than a tool to question and challenge and prod at the edges of reality. Also, I found many of the stories struggled to find a balance between the portrayal of the future and the inevitable discussion of Iraq's current state. Many employed the tactic of jumping back and forth between the future and the present/past, and I feel like this really detracted from the whole point of a depiction of the future, considering the already condensed form these stories were being written in. Aside from that, the writing often failed to capture me and the stories themselves were generally crude.
Not all of the stories in this collection suffered from these problems, though. The best, by far, was "Najufa", the story I felt best found the balance between the present and the future. It also integrated science fiction most flawlessly into its story in a meaningful way, and was definitely the most memorable. Others I enjoyed considerably more were "The Day by Day Mosque", "Kuszib", and "The Here and Now Prison".
Overall, this collection was definitely not what I expected, initially drawn by the fact that this was a bunch of #ownvoices stories written by Iraqis from around the world. Though I didn't end up enjoying many of the stories, there were a few that were well worth reading. -
Watch a mini-review in my August 2017 wrap up!
I received an advanced ebook of this collection from the publisher through NetGalley.
Overall, I found this to be a solid short fiction collection. A few stories were definitely not for me, but others I really, really enjoyed. That wide range landed the collection three stars from me. My favorite story in the collection was "Bagdad Syndrome"--I absolutely LOVED this one.
I found that the language itself often felt a bit stiff and formal, particularly in the first few stories. This might be because the collection contains translations. It also might be because I am simply not that familiar with Iraqi literature in general. I don't want to group all Iraqi literature together, but I'm sure that being more familiar with the Iraqi literary tradition would have added another layer to the collection. I noticed that over the course of the collection, that stiffness and formality seemed to fade--I don't know if this is because the language actually DOES shift over the course of the book, or if I simply got used to reading it (I think it's most likely the latter).
The general concept of this collection--imagine Iraq 100 years into the future--created a really interesting range of stories. Some were traditional futuristic sci-fi, some were more generally speculative, all were incredibly interesting (even those I didn't enjoy as much as others). -
Some of these were 4 stars, others were 3 - so it's really a 3.5 (even though overly qualifying stars is a pet peeve of mine). Besides some particular standout stories, I also appreciated the project of this collection and want to see more like it.
-
Hassan Blasim’s editorial call in Iraq + 100, originally suggested to him by his publisher, is a fascinating one—“imagine Iraq a hundred years after the US occupation, through short fiction”—and it has engendered a must-read anthology. In his Foreword, Blasim makes a number of interesting observations as he relates the challenge of getting stories for this project. “Perhaps unsurprisingly,” he says, “it was difficult to persuade many Iraqi writers to write stories set in the future when they were already so busy writing about the cruelty, horror and shock of the present, or trying to delve into the past to reread Iraq’s former nightmares and glories.” The significance of the achievement on hand becomes clear a few paragraphs later: “Iraqi literature suffers from a dire shortage of science fiction writing and I am close to certain that this book of short stories is the first of its kind, in theme and in form, in the corpus of modern Iraqi literature.” It’s certainly my first experience with contemporary Arabic science fiction and fantasy, and I’m grateful it exists. Kudos also to the translators of specific stories.
Blasim provides two possible reasons for the dearth of Arabic science fiction: “inflexible religious discourse” and “pride in the Arab poetic tradition.” It makes perfect sense, then, that the ten writers featured herein, including Blasim himself, would revolt against religious oppression and the tyranny of the past, and revolt they do, with vigor. These ten stories demonstrate a range of styles and themes, and several—like Mortada Gzar’s short but densely surreal “The Day By Day Mosque,” which kicks off with a description of a 99-year-old vinegar produced by “the National Snot Bank”—are completely sui generis. Yet there is a common thread of transgression and an explicit confrontation of Iraq’s violent past. Questions of identity, actual truth vs. political spin, the continuity of history, the ravages of disease and extreme poverty, are consistently illuminated through graphic horrors, acerbic parables, or combinations thereof. If this stuff doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you’re probably not reading it right.
Hassan Abdulrazzak’s “Kuszib” unquestionably hit me the hardest. It’s the most obviously science-fictional, in that it features an alien invasion, but its tone is notably measured. The story kicks off with a low clerk’s excitement at the prospect of taking his wife Ona to the elite, invitation-only “Feast,” which offers “a chance to sample the Sector’s finest gastronomical delights; the opportunity to mix with the cream of society; and introductions to the kind of people you’d never normally encounter as a mere sorting clerk.” The story brilliantly reframes the grotesque as the commonplace, testing our limits at the normalization of genocide, and culminates in an utterly devastating final line. “Kuszib,” one of the most extreme stories I’ve read in years, is not for the faint of heart. I’m just glad I don’t eat meat.
In Zhraa Alhaboby’s “Baghdad Syndrome,” another standout, a sick architect planning a special project for a public square of historical significance becomes haunted by strange dreams that lead him to Scheherazade. Hassan Blasim’s lushly inventive “The Gardens of Babylon,” also one of my favorites, chronicles the struggles and strange experiences of a “story designer” working on his latest “smart game,” and features such memorable oddities as “psychedelic insects” attached directly to the skull, and the difficulties of external point-of-view narration in stories featuring suicide. It’s a psychological tour-de-force, in direct conversation with literary classics, and its world is richly textured. The opening story, Anoud’s “Kahramana,” chronicles, in a sort of faux journalism, the story of a woman who escapes marriage to a ruthless dictator; though first celebrated for her act of bravery and defiance, she soon learns that the tides of political favor push both ways.
Diaa Jubaili’s “The Worker,” in which a Governor’s rhetoric adroitly manipulates the people, unflinchingly examines the horrific day-to-day tasks necessary during a time of destitution and disease, but crams too many historical references into its closing section to maintain its focus. Ali Bader’s “The Corporal,” a transliteration of the story of the People of the Cave, overtly referenced, presents a man displaced through time. Despite the irony of a future America becoming an extremist state overrun by religious intolerance, and the sting of its closing line, I found it too didactic to fully satisfy.
The three remaining stories all contain memorable images. In Khalid Kaki’s “Operation Daniel,” political dissidents of a Chinese leader who has taken over Kirkuk are “archived”: that is to say, incinerated and compressed into diamonds that will adorn the leader’s clothing. In Jalal Hassan’s “The Here and Now Prison,” Samir and his girlfriend Hala sneak into the Old City, at whose center lie mysteriously “massive columns of an enduring building, holding up a huge gold-colored dome,” and ensuing lessons in history. Ibrahim al-Marashi’s pilgrimage story, “Najufa,” features many wonders, including finger-embedded passports and droids who have earned the right to be called by their official job titles through an AI revolution, but geo-political extrapolations and insights into complex family dynamics lie at its core.
If you appreciate the discovery of new voices and new perspectives—one of the things that drew me to science fiction in the first place—you won’t want to miss this anthology, though it may repeatedly put you off while you’re reading it. It’s a one-of-a-kind excursion into histories, geographies and cultural values little known to Western readers. Many of the stories are brutal and bleak, but reading them is a mind-stretching experience, and it’s hard to ask more from fiction than trying to reshape the very way in which we view reality. -
I only read one short story from this book for a class. The whole book is a collection of short stories imagining Iraq 100 years after the American and British-led invasion.
People were forced away from their homes in the 21st century, and this story is about Iraqis reconnecting the pieces of their history for the love of Bagdad.
In "Bagdad Syndrome" by Zhraa Alhaboby, Sudra Sen Sumer is an architect creating a new design for Lover's Square, a square that once held a statue commemorating two lovers who were separated for having different religions. The statue itself was that of Scheherazade and Shahryar (he was a king who beheaded his wives so they wouldn't cheat on him. Scheherazade was a wife of his and stayed alive by telling stories and leaving cliffhangers to continue the next day). The statue has disappeared from the square a long time ago.
Sudra who has Bagdad Syndrome dreams of Scheherazade weeping. He receives a piece of the statue as a gift and tries to find the missing pieces to bring it all back together in his square. -
I picked this up after having read Hasam Blasim’s
The Iraqi Christ. However, where that was full of magical realism, as well as powerful messages of what it’s like to be a civilian during the American and British Invasion of the early 2000’s, this collection felt somewhat lacking.
The difference being, of course, that not all of the stories in this collection are written by Blasim but are selected by him. The concept: envision the state of Iraq 100 years after the US occupation, is a really great idea but goes to show that, even given a platform, you cannot expect citizens of a continuously war-torn country to be able to shine a positive light on their future or just brush their current situation aside.
I’ve made a few comments on each of the stories, below. Spoilers, obviously.
I did enjoy some of the stories in this collection and it did, as Blasim suggested, keep the current plight of Iraq firmly lodged in my brain for at least a week whilst I was reading it but it’s not something I’ll be reaching for again.
Still, I'll be looking out for Blasim again in the future.
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Review originally written for
my blog
First I’d like to thank Macmillan-Tor for the ARC of this book. It had been on my to-read list for a while as it looked perfect for my Read Around the World challenge and so when I saw it was being re-released I jumped at the chance to get an ARC.
This is a collection of short stories all set 100 years in the future and all written by Iraqi authors and translated by a variety of translators. It’s incredibly fascinating to see all the different ideas they have about what Iraq will be like in the future as they are all so different and varied – and I found it amusing that quite a few all ended up with the same ideas for the US.
Because it’s a collection of short stories, it’s naturally hard to discuss too much without spoiling them but I will say that I really enjoyed all the stories in this collection. Some were definitely stronger than others, but they were all excellent and it was very refreshing to read about Iraq from the perspectives of those who live there themselves rather than from a Western perspective.
This book is a perfect choice for those wanting to read more Muslim authors and I’m very pleased to use it as my pick for Iraq on my Around the World challenge. There is also a fantastic introduction to the collection which discusses the literary scene in Iraq which was very interesting. -
As Americans, we invaded and wrecked Iraq, so the least we can do is read some Iraqi literature. As editor Hassan Blasim puts it, the Arab world has a dearth of genre literature. There is no Arab Tolkien or Asimov, no living or historical author who links the myths of the Muslim world to a modern retelling, or the present to the future. to paraphrase his introduction, the Arab imagination has been buried by authoritarian politics, religious fundamentalism, and foreign shock therapy. This 2013 collection, a decade after the sack by the latter day Hulagu Khans, Bush and Blair, imagines many futures for Iraqi in 2113.
The writers are exceptional, judging by the bios in the back. This is the creme of Iraqi literati, both in Mesopotamia and in exile. For all their literary skills, they are only okay at the art of speculative fiction. The best of the stories have the acid satire of Russian literature. The interesting ones find future peace in Iraq's history as the cradle of civilization. The average ones gripe about the injustice of occupation and sectarian warfare, and too many, roughly half by my count, fumble with the basic tools of speculative literature, getting so lost in imagination that they forget to add characters, or a plot.
I enjoyed reading this book, but I can't really recommend it either. -
I don't really know what to say about this book. I really liked the introduction and the afterword, as I thought they did a great job of framing the collection of short stories and the purpose for putting it together. The stories themselves did seem a little amateurish, however. I don't know if it was because this was a genre the authors don't normally write or whether it was that the translations were a little awkward, but it did not feel like these were polished, professional stories. I don't regret reading it, as it did give me a little glimpse into the culture of Iraq and I did really enjoy that aspect, but I felt that there was something very unfinished about the stories. They also do show the devastation caused to the Iraqi culture by the endless wars, especially the American invasion, and I think that's important for us (US citizens) to read.
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قصص جميلة بأسلوب الفانتازيا الغريب على القارئ العربي
هذا الادب يحتاج الكثير والكثير وها قد بدأت البوادر -
IRAQ +100 IS RATED 85%.
10 STORIES : 2 GREAT / 5 GOOD / 3 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF
What will Iraq look like in the year 2103? That was the question proposed by writer/editor Hassan Blasim to Iraqi writers around the world. The result is what is being hailed as “The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq.”
Blasim is blunt about Iraqi Science Fiction in his introduction.
"Iraqi literature suffers from a dire shortage of science fiction writing. … Perhaps the most obvious reason is that science fiction was allowed to track the development of actual science from about the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. The same period was hardly a time of technological growth for Iraqis, languishing under Georgian ‘Mamluk’ then returning Ottoman overlords; indeed some would say the sun set on Iraqi science centuries before — as it set on their cultural and creative impulses— in the wake of the Abbasid Caliphate. …
Today there is great hope in a new generation, a generation native to the internet and to globalization. … Serious attempts to write science fiction have started to appear, especially not that science is so much easier to get hold of."
The future Iraq’s created by these authors are very unlike the science fictional futures traditionally presented. Aliens and robots appear, but large global movements are more important. Many imagine an Iraq still under control of another power, often China. Others imagine the United States shredded by its own religious extremists. Still more discuss extreme horrors in such a matter-of-fact way that modern readers would want to label these with a “content warning,” but I feel would insult so many that have lived with and through those horrors.
This is an offbeat and alien collection and it is for those reasons that I strongly recommend it. Thoughtful and strange visions of the future - visions that are really of the present - are what makes Science Fiction so interesting.
Two stories in this anthology really stand out:
“Baghdad Syndrome” by Zhraa Alhaboby. Trans: Emre Bennett. This is a beautiful and delicate story of an architect coming to grips with the fact that he has Bagdad Syndrome while he is designing a town square. He is haunted by exotic dreams that focus his attention on the history of the square and its former occupants. This is a bittersweet story told is crystalline prose.
“Kuszib” by Hassan Abdulrazzak. Hard. Ugly. Brutal. Extremely violent. Weirdly sexual. Angrily satirical. This intense story follows a low level employee and his wife who get the chance to take part in the Feast. The gourmet festival highlights human delicacies. Read that sentence again! A savage allegory for the kindly horrors of colonial power and pulling no punches whatsoever. You may not like this, but you will not forget it. Not a word is wasted.
***
IRAQ +100 IS RATED 85%.
10 STORIES : 2 GREAT / 5 GOOD / 3 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF
“Kahramania” by Anoud
Good. A young woman, fleeing from an arranged marriage to a warlord, seeks asylum with the Americans and finds herself a pawns in a game of propaganda and bureaucracy.
“The Gardens of Babylon” by Hassan Blasin. Trans: Jonathan Wright
Good. An artist of video games, living in Chinese-controlled Iraqi domes, needs help from a psychedelic brain insect to find inspiration for a new work.
“The Corporal” by Ali Bader. Trans: Elisabeth Jaquette
Good. An Iraqi solider, killed by an American sniper in 2003, returns from the afterlife to experience the dramatic changes and tell his story..
“The Worker” by Diaa Jubaili. Trans: Andrew Leber
Average. The Governor of Basra uses the horrors of life elsewhere to say that the horrors his people are experiencing aren’t that bad, but there is someone else in that town square.
“The Day by Day Mosque” by Mortada Gzar. Trans: Katharine Halls
Average. 99-year-old vinegar sparks a tale of a Snot Collector and a local mosque.
“Baghdad Syndrome” by Zhraa Alhaboby. Trans: Emre Bennett
Great. An architect who is slowly becoming blind - the Baghdad Sydrome - becomes fanatically focused on his last product. To design a town square.
“Operation Daniel” by Khalid Kaki. Trans: Adam Talib
Average. A Chinese overlord censors everything about the past, but a few young people casually rebel.
“Kuszib” by Hassan Abdulrazzak.
Great. Brutal, horrible, disgusting, and brilliantly conceived. An alien couple go to a high end Feast where human delicacies are served. An unforgettable inversion of the Iraqi occupation in horrific alien allegory.
“The Here and Now Prison” by Jalal Hassan. Trans: Max Weiss
Good. The past, including the dead, exists within the Old City, but one young couple with sneak inside to experience it.
“Najufa” by Ibrahim al-Marashi.
Good. A large family of Iraqi Alaskans - now its own country - make a pilgrimage back to a Iraq that has been transformed by benevolent AI. The purpose of the trip become a very important turning moment in the family. -
8/31/2017 - I love science fiction anthologies & I'm excited to see one featuring Iraqi authors!
1. Kahramana by
Anoud - ★★★☆☆
2. The Gardens of Babylon by
Hassan Blasim - ★★☆☆☆
Strange...
3. The Corporal by
Ali Bader - ★★★★★
4. The Worker by
Diaa Jubaili - ★★★★☆
This one had pieces of history woven into the story, though the "present day" in 100 years was bleak..
5. The Day by Day Mosque by
Mortada Gzar - ★☆☆☆☆
What??! Why are they collecting people's snot? Why do they want to reverse everything? So confusing!!
6. Baghdad Syndrome by
Zhraa Alhaboby - ★★★☆☆
7. Operation Daniel by
Khalid Kaki - ★★☆☆☆
8. Kuszib by
Hassan Abdulrazzak - ★★★★★
Horrifying !
9. The Here and Now Prison by Jalal Hassan - ★★☆☆☆
Very abrupt ending.
10. Najufa by
Ibrahim Al-Marashi - ★★☆☆☆
*I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. -
Why I wrote my story in this book "The Prison of Here and Now"?
May be just to say: “I am not from Fallujah”
In the seventies, when I was a little Baghdadi kid, playing Hide and seek, Marbles or “The shit will leak from his butt” (It was a real game believe it or not.) I had a son of one of my 7 aunties named “Falah” who looks exactly like Richard Gear in “Breathless”, joined “The Arabic Navigation Company” and disappeared for a while, but when he came back a few months after, he was Richard Gear in sailor suit.
I learned he had been traveling all over the world. He told us many stories, about Italy, Greece and England which I forgot most of them but I will never forget his answer when my Dad asked him:
“What they think of us?”
As Iraqis, he meant.
Falah burst laughing:
“They need to know us first!” Falah exclaimed.
“Why?”, my Dad questioned.
“I don’t know” Falah replied, “When anyone asked me where are you from and when I say from Iraq they ask me again: Iran? They know Iran, but no one knows where the fuck Iraq is!”
I’m sure that we felt sorry for ourselves and our country at that time, but after many many years, after I came to the US in 1999, and after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, I felt sorry for myself and for my both countries, (Iraq and US) when a young American, a very smart bartender, in New Years eve of 2005, asked me the whole same question: “Where are you from?”
And I replied:
“From Iraq”
And right away he gave it to me in the face:
“From Fallujah?”
That’s why when “Hassan Balasim” announced his idea to do this book, 3 years ago, I jumped on the boat, maybe just to say “Fallujah is just a little tiny town with a population of only 10 thousand people, while Iraq is a size of California with a population of 35 million people, 99% of them are not from Fallujah! -
This collection of stories from Iraqi and Iraqi diaspora writers imagines the country 100 years after the 2003 invasion. It suffers from the unevenness of a lot of collections but the unifying theme means most stories have an interesting angle on even well-worn concepts.
The introduction mentions that speculative fiction is not widely produced in Iraqi literature and this does show through in the SF ideas and structures employed. However, the settings and points of view keep things fresh throughout.
The most successful stories for me featured more of a hook than simply the speculative setting. My favourites were: Baghdad Syndrome by Zhraa Alhaboby, The Here And Now Prison by Jalal Hasan and Najufa by Ibrahim al-Marashi. Well worth reading. -
Blasim asked contemporary Iraqi authors to write short pieces speculating on their homeland in the year 2103, and the prompt resulted in this collection of stories that span science-fiction, a clever twist on the aṣḥāb al kahf (People of the Cave), sharp political critique, a vision of Baghdad as Chinese-built domes to protect against desertification, and the way the giant 1970 concrete statue of "The Worker" sees a century pass before being stuck in a museum and mistaken for Saddam Hussein. This is a challenging insight into Iraqi popular culture and a twist on western familiar genres.
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Reading Iraq +100 is like reading two books: I almost put the book down in the first half, where women are decorative sex objects or snakes. In the second half, the stories become more nuanced, characters develop, they shock the reader with clever pivots. All of the stories provide a window to the current context and reflect the trauma of the second Iraq War, and from that standpoint, these stories are valuable and we should read them.
Is this book important? Yes. Is it worth reading? Yes. Is it riddled with issues? Definitely. -
This book is a disaster. It lacks imagination to a degree that you'd think it was written by a collection of robots being fed only manuals of how to put beautiful sentences together. It does the people of Iraq, which presumably the introduction claims to be for, a huge injustice by it's lack of faith in human imagination or the Iraqi imagination in this case. The writers of the stories in this collection claim they gave written of the future but all they have done is projecting their sad miserable believes onto the readers.
Absolutely never ever recommend this to anyone. -
The stories in this collection range from flat at best to nonsensical at worst. They're meant to imagine Iraq 100 years after the 2003 invasion, and some did that. Some used it as an excuse to write about Iraq today. None were especially compelling or even engaging, and though they were all translated by different people, the translations were almost universally awkward with some obvious errors and poor use of English idioms. This should have been a lot more effective than it was.
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عشر قصص تصور حال المجتمع العراقي بعد مائة عام من الاحتلال الأمريكي، فانتازيا وخيال علمي وصراعات ذهنية بين الماضي والحاضر رصد للتحولات البشرية بين ماضي ذهب بكل صراعاته وحاضر تتحكم فيه التكنولوجيا بالإنسان ومشاعره وطريقة تفكيره الكتاب علي المستوي الأدبي جيد وإن كان يعيب بعض قصصه السرد الزائد والحشو الكلامى لانتهاء بعض قصص الكتاب
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2.5/5. The premise is great and I'm mindful that it's a kind of writing I'm not used to (and also that they've all been translated), but I just couldn't get into a lot of these stories, which felt amateurish or stilted. The attempts to look back at the Iraq of "a hundred years ago" often came about through choppy exposition.
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Definitely some good, interesting ideas in here but none I really loved. Might be biased since I really didn't like one of the last stories, only one I didn't finish.
