Hassan Blasim and translator Jonathan Wright receiving the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, Thursday 22nd May.
If you missed it this morning, there's an excellent interview with IFFP winner Hassan Blasim on BBC World Service's Outlook, repeated tonight at 21:06. Scroll to 26.30 to listen. Hassan discusses his time as an illegal immigrant before he found asylum in Finland.
IFFP 2014 Award-winner Hassan Blasim features on BBC Front Row
After winning the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Iraqi author Hassan Blasim was invited to discuss his prize-winning collection The Iraqi Christ with BBC Front Row's presenter John Wilson.
Hassan Blasim's book received the UK's foreign fiction prize but it has yet to be published in Arabic. How come?
‘The Iraqi Christ’, which presents Iraq as a surrealist inferno, has yet to be published in its original Arabic.
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The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has its first Arabic winner. And what a winner: Hassan Blasim’s The Iraqi Christ, translated by Jonathan Wright, is a collection of 14 short stories set largely in the blood-stained and hope-drained aftermath of the 2003 invasion and occupation.
Iraqi author Hassan Blasim enjoying his success winning this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize with his second short story collection The Iraqi Christ (Comma, 2013). The £10,000 prize was received by Hassan and his translator Jonathan Wright (who will take a 50% share of the money) at the award ceremony in London on Thursday 22nd May. Hassan then spent the weekend at Hay Festival where he did a special 'Breakfast with the Winner' event on the Saturday with Jonathan, in discussion with IFFP judge and Senior Writer of the Independent, Boyd Tonkin.
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Hassan Blasim is the first Arabic writer on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist.
Comma Press is proud to announce that Iraqi author Hassan Blasim’s short story collection The Iraqi Christ, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright, has been short-listed for the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
The first ever Arabic title to make the shortlist, The Iraqi Christ is Blasim’s second short story collection, following the success of his UK debut The Madman of Freedom Square (Comma, 2009), which was also longlisted for the Prize in 2010. The stories in The Iraqi Christ explore the atrocities of war and sectarian violence in his home country, in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, and the trauma of exile, taking us from the streets of Baghdad to the dark forests of Finland, with a prose style that has been compared to Kafka, Gogol, Borges and Bolaño.
Judge Boyd Tonkin said of The Iraqi Christ: 'Strung between reportage, memoir and dark fantasy, these linked stories present Iraq, post-Saddam and post-invasion, as a surrealist inferno. Bizarre horrors become everyday events. Outlandish tragedies punctuate ordinary life. Blasim's wild imagination, pitchblack comedy and fierce compassion, all captured by Jonathan Wright's pacy, pugnacious translation, keep nihilism at bay.'
Watch an interview with Hassan:
10% off Translated Titles with Comma Press
Happy International Mother Language Day, an annual celebration of multilingualism and cultural diversity. We've taken 10% off our translated titles on Amazon Kindle this week to celebrate. That includes Hassan Blasim’s award-winning The Iraqi Christ and Pawel Huelle’s Cold Sea Stories, as well as a range of other titles translated from Catalan, Arabic, German, Dutch and more. Make your weekend reading a translated title, and go on a literary journey to Asia, Europe, the Middle East and beyond...
Click here to view what's on offer.
Comma Classics Available to Download Now
This week we've been busy publishing our new series of eBooks: Comma Classics.
Taken from our recent paperback release Morphologies, each essay concentrates on a particular writer that helped shape the history of the short story - Hawthorne, Poe and Doyle are to name but a few - as well as providing a selection of their very best stories.
Available for Kindle and Kobo at £3.99 each, Comma Classics are perfect for students and academics, as well as those who love to write and read short stories.
Award-winning author Sara Maitland reads the story 'Dark Humour' from her sell-out collection Moss Witch, at the Lancaster LitFest.
Supported by the Institute of Physics.
National Short Story Day returns on the 21st December 2013 – the shortest day of the year! Readers and writers all over the globe are taking time out from their usual reading habits for a small moment of literary calm – a chance to enjoy and contemplate the quiet wonder of the short story.
Get Your Orders in by 4PM TODAY to ensure Christmas delivery!
Make sure you check out our Christmas offer - buy two Comma books and get a third for ONE PENNY! They're flying off the shelves faster than... a fast thing.
Covering a range of genres, including, horror, crime, translated fiction and science into fiction, we'll have something for everyone. So have a gander and remember to get them in by 4PM TODAY!
Lovely, fresh copies of this arrived at the Comma office this morning. Still time to grab one before Christmas!
Guess the city!
FIRST PIC: Guess the landmark, city, and story (see letsgimbal.com ) and win a FREE copy of Litmus!