Tuesday, October 13, 2009

iraqi author hassan blasim's book of stories launched in london 23 oct

















Comma Press launches
The Madman of Freedom Square
by Hassan Blasim

Friday 23rd October 7pm
Calder Bookshop.
51 The Cut,
London SE1 8LF

Admission Free. All Welcome


Celebrating a unique short story collection from a young filmmaker, writer and refugee of the Iraq War. Hassan's debut collection is a dark excursion into the chaos of contemporary Baghdad, an allegorical snapshot of recent Iraqi history (spanning over twenty years from the Iran-Iraq War through to the Occupation), and a rare critique of the refugee experience in Europe.

"At first you receive it with the kind of shocked applause you’d award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You’re quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime. At his best Blasim produces a corrosive mixture of broken lyricism, bitter irony & hyper-realism which topples into the fantastic & the quotidian in the same reading moment." - M John Harrison

'The Madman of Freedom Square' has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN's Writers in Translation programme, supported by Bloomberg.

Comma Press
www.commapress.co.uk
http://www.versionfestival.co.uk/

Comma's previous titles include 'Madinah: City Stories from the Middle East' edited by the Lebanese poet, translator and journalist Joumana Haddad.

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