Delighted to hear that Hassan Blasim’s The Iraqi Christ has become the first book written in Arabic to win the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It’s richly deserved for both Blasim, the translator Jonathan Wright, and his UK publishers Comma Press, and I have to admit, a bit of a surprise. I was sure publishing phenomenon Karl Ove Knausgaard would take the prize home to Norway, but pleased to be proved wrong. As judge Boyd Tonkin said:
“Hassan Blasim stands out for his fearless candour and rule-busting artistry. The 14 stories of The Iraqi Christ, often surreal in style but always rooted in heart-breaking truth, depict this pitiless era with deep compassion, pitch-black humour and a visionary yearning for another, better life. Jonathan Wright’s translation from the Arabic captures all of their passion, their desperation and their soaring imaginative energy. The Iraqi Christ is not only the first Arabic book to win the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, but a classic work of post-war witness, mourning and revolt.”
I’m going to try and catch Hassan in the next few days, but in the meantime, here’s the interview I did with him last year at – weirdly – Manchester Piccadilly station, originally published in The National.
Hassan Blasim – the power of storytelling
When the Iraqi author Hassan Blasim left his native Baghdad in 2000, the state of his country had exhausted him. “People say war is soldiers and bombs but it’s more than that,” he says. “In Iraq it’s been a constant war with your neighbour, your dictator, your society, your religion. Trying to survive is like a nightmare. Perhaps that’s why my stories turn out the way they do.”
His latest translated short story collection, The Iraqi Christ, attempts to both make sense of and poke fun at Iraq’s recent past. And Blasim is uniquely placed to chronicle what his English publishers call the “dark absurdities” of Iraq. He fled to the safer Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah after attracting the wrong sort of attention for his anti-establishment documentaries, but even though he was among like-minded people, he found himself in danger for being Arab in Kurdistan.
So began a four-year, nomadic existence on the fringes of society in Iran, Turkey and Bulgaria. Ask him why it took so long to reach Finland (where he still lives today) to gain refugee status and the answer is simple. “I didn’t have enough money to pay the mafia to smuggle me in,” he laughs. “Writing short stories is not so lucrative.”
Eight years later, Blasim is on the move again but for much more edifying reasons. After an excitable review of his first translated collection, The Madman of Freedom Square, referred to Blasim as “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive”, interest snowballed. The Iraqi Christ is published next month, and when The National catches up with the ebullient 39-year-old author in Manchester, he’s at the end of a UK-wide book tour to promote it.
“It’s part two of Madman in a way,” he explains. “I mean, you can’t talk about violence, war and the last 40 years of Iraqi history in one short story collection. We are all familiar with the news stories about bombs in Iraq killing 50 people. But I found myself wanting to understand the people behind these numbers.”
Whether Blasim is the best contemporary writer of Arabic fiction is a matter of interpretation but his writing has a uniquely explosive force. In fact, the language has got him in trouble: Blasim’s work is banned in Jordan and censored in Lebanon, which, depending on his mood, is either a source of amusement (“people can read it online anyway”) or exasperation.
“People die in the street because of some roadside bomb and yet all everyone talks about is this beautiful, sentimental, poetic Arab language that I’m supposedly destroying. But who is writing about what it’s really like, about this nightmarish, unreal violence people are experiencing? So I really don’t care if it’s not literary in the traditional sense.”
There were also concerns about his attitude towards religion in Madman. Even the title of this new collection implies a certain recklessness in Blasim’s dealings with traditional belief systems. He raises an eyebrow at the suggestion.
“Look, anyone who reads my stories would immediately know I absolutely don’t attack religion. Maybe I make a few jokes about it and some don’t like that but people do talk this way in the street. It’s completely normal in Iraq. And yet when it comes to publishing what people might actually say, suddenly it’s not right.”
The title story, The Iraqi Christ, is a rather beautiful tale about the sacrifice made by a Christian, Daniel, so that his mother might live. “You know, there are two million Christians in Iraq,” Blasim smiles. “Of course what Daniel does in the end is sad but all Iraqis are like Daniel. We suffer. We give our lives. And I wonder whether the focus in Iraq is sometimes on the importance of religion rather than people.”
Such concerns are part of the reason Blasim feels it’s too soon to return to Iraq. Finland remains “a place of peace where I can talk about everything”, and he certainly doesn’t feel that the distance is a problem. “I hear the stories. I build in the fiction. I use my imagination,” he says.
Beyond all the violence and torment, the belief in the power of storytelling shines through.
“I wouldn’t say I have a big political message, actually,” he says. “But think of it like this: when you put a camera in the street in London, not that many people are interested. When you do it in Baghdad, everybody wants to come and tell their story. Doing that is so important for a country that has been through what Iraq has had to suffer.”
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