Noizbait esana du Hassan Blasimek irakiar bakoitzak beldurrezko bost istorio dituela gutxienez kontatzeko. Agian horregatik dago liburu hau kontalariz betea, modu konpultsiboan beren istorioak azaltzen dizkiotenak tabernako ezezagunari, psikiatrari, treneko ausazko bidaideari, irratiko mikrofonoari, datu bila dabilen ikertzai- leari, adiskide eta senide presente edo absenteari.

Ezina dirudienaren gainetik zutuntzen diren ahotsak dira: gizakienak nahiz animalienak, denbora eta espazioaren mugak hautsiz mintzo direnak, bizidunen gorputzak literalki inbaditu eta haien baitatik berba egiten duten hildakoenak, mundu honetan hasitako solasaldia hil ostean jarraitzen duten lagunenak, zoramenaren ertzean bizi direnenak, bizialdi bakar batean bizitza bat baino gehiago bizitzea egokitu zaienenak...

Liburu hau osatzen duten hamahiru ipuinetan Kafka paseatzen da, bideokamera bat hartuta, gerrek eta indarkeriak inarrositako Mila gau eta bat gehiago-ko lurraldetik.

Kristo irakiarrak Erresuma Batuko Independent Foreign Fiction Prize saria irabazi zuen 2014an, ingelesera itzulitako literatur lanik onenari ematen zaiona. Sari hau irabazi duen lehen obra arabiarra eta lehen ipuin bilduma izan zen.

"A master-class in metaphor, a new kind of story-telling forged in the crucible of war"
By sally tarbox on 9 April 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Fourteen short stories, set mainly in the author's native Iraq - a few in Finland, where he now lives.
By and large the writing is pretty accomplished, bringing to life the horrors of conflict. I found the Finland-based ones much more obscure and unenjoyable and only managed one of the three (and that with a struggle.) ( )

Short stories.

This is a series of thirteen short stories mostly based in Iraq, though a few are based in Finland, where the author now lives. After an initial reading I was left with a sense of horror and shock at the level of violence portrayed. Fortunately, this was a book group read and it certainly helped to be able to discuss the narratives with others, which gave some context to the metaphors that I had missed or misunderstood.

It's an interesting mix of stories, some have an element of magical realism, others are obviously born of a violent background. There is some generosity shown to characters, but for me it was not enough to lift the overall gloom that I was left me with.

I was hoping to find some recognisable theme linking them all, but apart from the "trauma and the curious strategies human beings adopt to process it", as advertised in the bumf, there were no obvious links other than one pair of stories centred around a compass. I did like that the author popped up in the narrative a few times, however, an interesting twist.

The ratings given by other readers were quite varied, but on the whole it was the readers from Arabic backgrounds who gave the highest ratings and those of us from the west were significantly less generous.

An interesting read but not an author I'll be in a hurry to read again. ( )

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by an insurgent into the ultimate act of terror…

A deviser of crosswords survives a car-bomb attack, only to discover he is now haunted by one of its victims…

Fleeing a robbery, a Baghdad shopkeeper falls into a deep hole, at the bottom of which sits a djinni and the corpse of a soldier from a completely different war…

From legends of the desert to horrors of the forest, Blasim’s stories blend the fantastic with the everyday, the surreal with the all-too-real. Taking his cues from Kafka, his prose shines a dazzling light into the dark absurdities of Iraq’s recent past and the torments of its countless refugees. The subject of this, his second collection, is primarily trauma and the curious strategies human beings adopt to process it (including, of course, fiction). The result is a masterclass in metaphor – a new kind of story-telling, forged in the crucible of war, and just as shocking.

My Review: This book won The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2014.

It's not instantly obvious to me why it won such a prestigious prize, not because it's a poorly written book, but because it's much of a muchness with the many, many story collections there are in the world. I'm not sorry to have read it, but I am not sure I'll remember much about most of it. It's fine, it's evocative of time and place, it's a very economical piece of writing. But the BEST FOREIGN FICTION published in 2013?

I dunno 'bout that one for sure, but most of me says "not a damn chance."

Anyway, to the trenches:

"The Song of the Goats" is a modest story about a man whose family is completely insane, not least of all his good self.

On more than one occasion I heard how life apparently advances, moves on, sets sail or, at worst, apparently crawls slowly forward. My life, on the other hand, simply exploded like a firecracker in the hand of God, a small flare in his mighty firmament of bombardment.

I relate. 3 stars

"The Hole" is a parable. A jinni in a hole that traps people fleeing certain death. ~meh~ Read it before, nothing new to say and not much fun to read. 2 stars

"The Fifth Floor Window" brings home the stunning, insanity-inducing reality of "collateral damage" by way of cancer patients in a Baghdad hospital. Three men in a room, only one can think past the horrors of the war in the hospital courtyard.

The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere I longed to be more than the university campus. I was preparing for a master's on fantasy literature. I was interested in why the country's literature did not include this distinctive genre. I had this great passion for studying and writing, which they explained in my household with the story of the umbilical cord. When I was born, and at my father's request, my elder sister buried my umbilical cord in the courtyard of her primary school. My father attributed my {brother's} academic failure to the fact that my mother buried his umbilical cord in the garden of our house.

One can see where his taste for phauntaisee arose from. 4 stars

"The Iraqi Christ" is the title story, and resembles a sort of "Appointment in Samarra" narrated by the victim...Daniel the Christian saves his compatriots with his premonitions, until one day he doesn't, and for no reason I can figure out. 3.5 stars

"The Green Zone Rabbit" offers a bleak look at the street level of murder in the name of god, a subject guaranteed to exercise my outrage muscles. The narrator has a familiar personality:

The pleasure I found in reading books was disconcerting...I felt anxious about every new piece of information. I would latch onto one particular detail and start look for references and other versions of it in other writings. I remembered, for example, that for quite some time I tracked down the subject of kissing. I read and read and felt dizzy with the subject, as if I had eaten a psychotropic fruit.

Don't we all know someone a bit like that? Why is everyone staring at me? 4 stars

"A Wolf" is the maundering, drunken bar story of an immigrant man trying to make a sodden kind of sense of a world he doesn't begin to understand.

...I believe in dreams more than I believe in God. Dreams get into you and leave, then come back with new fruit, but God is just a vast desert.

Out of the mouths of drunks... 3.5 stars

"Crosswords" takes a terrible moment of violent sectarian idiocy and makes it worse with the intersection of PTSD and Spring-Heeled Jack. Chilling. 3.5 stars

"Dear Beto" purports to be the philosophical musings of a Finnish dog. I don't doubt that there is some metaphorical gubbins in here. Frankly, I couldn't care less. 2 stars, all for this line: "You can't understand beauty without peace of mind and you can't get close to the truth without fear."

"The Killers and the Compass" marks the rite of passage of a kid into manhood (of a horrifying sort) in a brutal, nihilistic culture of viciousness. Impossible to read without despairing of the future, the present, and the past. Pass the razor blades. 3 stars

"Why Don't You Write A Novel, Instead of Talking About All These Characters?" seems to want to ask the question, "what makes a good story out of the dreadful, iniquitous, dreary stuff of reality?" The answer is, "not this." 2 stars

"Sarsara's Tree" is a pretty fable about the incredible power of loss to break the consensus of lies we call reality into unfamiliar shards. Also, don't take milk-soaked flowers from strange little girls. 3.5 stars

"The Dung Beetle", or as I like to call it, "The Origins of an Iraqi Man as a Writer in a Freakin' Cold Climate That Makes His Desert-Born Brain Go Doolally." 2.5 stars

"A Thousand and One Knives" just frankly couldn't keep my interest, and it seemed to be about some guy who had some stuff happen to him and porno pics with torture figured into it somehow and then there's a baby who materializes knives...I dunno, whatever, just MAKE IT STOP!

Fortunately, this was the last story.


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