Manchester's Comma Press have just sold Hassan Blasim's short story collection 'The Corpse Exhibition' to Penguin USA (editor: John Siciliano).
The deal is for a collection of stories comprised of both his first collection, Madman of Freedom Square, and his second, The Iraqi Christ (due out in the UK in December). The US edition, titled 'The Corpse Exhibition' is expected out in the Fall 2013.

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  Award Winning and Banned
Hassan Blasim's forthcoming second collection, The Iraqi Christ, has just been awarded one of English Pen's four Writers in Translation Awards for 2012. Almost simultaneously, news has reached Comma that the Arabic edition of Hassan's first book, The Madman of Freedom Square (which took three years to find an Arabic publisher after the English edition came out, and only then appeared in a heavily censored state) has just been officially banned in Jordan. More comment here and here. Censorship, as always, is alive and well.

Comma Preess

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The Madman of Freedom Square


Finnish edition , out this September

Italian Edition

Arabic Edition

amazon
comma press
akateeminen kirjakauppa

The Madman of Freedom Squareby Hassan Blasim
Translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright.

The first major literary work about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective.

*Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010

'Perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive...'
– The Guardian, 12 Jun 10.

'The news machine has shifted its attention to Afghanistan, and Iraqis are being left to fend for themselves. Blasim's collection reminds us that anything could still happen there. Iraq's story must still be told, and we need Iraqi voices like Blasim's to tell it.'
– Intelligent Life, Nov 09.

'Blasim pitches everyday horror into something almost gothic... his taste for the surreal can be Gogol-like.'
The Independent, 6 Oct 09.

'Blasim moves adeptly between surreal, internalised states of mind and ironic commentary on Islamic extremism and the American invasion... excellent.
– The Metro, 22 Oct 09.

'Crisp and shocking.... Too febrile and macabre to file under reportage, this cruel, funny and unsettling debut has hooks and twists that will lodge in any mind.'
– The Guardian

  'A powerful collection.' 

Danny Yee's Book Reviews –

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