New book imagines Iraq in 100 years' time

An anthology of short stories published today asks ten Iraqi writers what their country might look like in the year 2103

Feature by News Team | 17 Nov 2016

Billed as 'the first ever collection of science fiction from Iraq', a new title from Manchester-based Comma Press considers what Iraq might look like a century after the American- and British-led invasion of 2003, and 87 years down the line from the current conflict.

Edited by Hassan Blasim, Iraq + 100 brings together ten Iraqi writers to contemplate how repercussions of the 2003 intervention might affect the lives of Iraqi citizens and influence the country's economy, culture and politics. 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? Adopting a range of approaches – including science fiction, allegory and magic realism – the stories explore the writers' and the nation's hopes and fears. 

The book has already caused something of a social media storm, and Blasim – himself the winner of the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Award for his collection The Iraqi Christ – has been interviewed by BBC World Service and BBC Arabic.

[Watch Hassan Blasim talk to BBC Arabic about Iraq + 100. Interview in Arabic] 

The ten writers – Blasim, Ali Bader, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Diaa Jubaili, Ibrahim al-Marashi, Khalid Kaki, Anoud, Mortada Gzar, Zhraa Alhaboby and Jalal Hasan – address issues including climate change, freedom of speech and nationhood as well as Islamic State and the long-term aftermath of the Iraq War.

Often buoyed by a dark, inventive humour, their stories are populated with figures including time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues and even 'tiger-droids' – all amounting to an emergent aesthetic Comma are terming the 'Iraqi fantastical'. As Anoud says of her story in an interview with BBC World News, it aims to "give the people in the gutter a chance to laugh at their do-gooders, clergy and oppressors."

[Listen to Anoud talk with Blasim about science fiction in Iraq.

In an interview with The Skinny in 2013, Blasim identified “the problem... that there are not many publishers [in the West] who are searching for Iraqi writers,” and said he was working with Comma Press to find and publish new voices from Iraq. Work had just begun on Iraq + 100; “a new kind of writing” entirely, as there is almost no tradition of speculative fiction in the Arab world. Nonetheless, Blasim said, as Iraqi writers, “People are always asking us ‘What will happen in Iraq in fifty years time? How do you see your country in the future?’

“It's a challenge first, to write something that’s never been done in Iraqi literature, but also it's a chance to ask our literary people what they think about Iraq – how it’s going, where it is headed.” 


Iraq + 100: Stories from a Century after the Invasion, edited by Hassan Blasim, is published 17 Nov by Comma Press 

commapress.co.uk