Iraq + 100

The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq

By: Hassan Blasim - editor

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

A groundbreaking audiobook anthology of science fiction from Iraq that will challenge your perception of what it means to be "the other".

This collection of short stories is masterfully edited by Hassan Blasim and features the following authors:

Hassan Blasim (translated by Jonathan Wright)

Ali Bader (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

Diaa Jubaili (translated by Andrew Leber)

Mortada Gzar (translated by Katharine Halls)

Zhraa Alhaboby (translated by Emre Bennett)

Khalid Kaki (translated by Adam Talib)

Jalal Hasan (translated by Max Weiss)

Anoud (translated by herself)

Hassan Abdulrazzak (translated by himself)

Ibrahim al-Marashi (translated by himself)

"History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard." (Operation Daniel)

In a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like.

Now, try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control.

Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi authors (those who still live in that nation and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion?

Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be "the other", this groundbreaking anthology contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, Iraq + 100 is also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

©2016 Authors & Translators (P)2017 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Peter Ganim was just the right choice to narrate this audiobook." (AudioFile Magazine)

"Not from Fallujah"

(Why I wrote my story in this book "The Prison of Here and Now"?)
May be just to say: “I am not from Fallujah”
In the seventies, when I was a little Baghdadi kid, playing Hide and seek, Marbles or “The shit will leak from his butt” (It was a real game believe it or not.) I had a son of one of my 7 aunties named “Falah” who looks exactly like Richard Gear in “Breathless”, joined “The Arabic Navigation Company” and disappeared for a while, but when he came back a few months after, he was Richard Gear in sailor suit.
I learned he had been traveling all over the world. He told us many stories, about Italy, Greece and England which I forgot most of them but I will never forget his answer when my Dad asked him:
“What they think of us?”
As Iraqis, he meant.
Falah burst laughing:
“They need to know us first!” Falah exclaimed.
“Why?”, my Dad questioned.
“I don’t know” Falah replied, “When anyone asked me where are you from and when I say from Iraq they ask me again: Iran? They know Iran, but no one knows where the fuck Iraq is!”
I’m sure that we felt sorry for ourselves and our country at that time, but after many many years, after I came to the US in 1999, and after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, I felt sorry for myself and for my both countries, (Iraq and US) when a young American, a very smart bartender, in New Years eve of 2005, asked me the whole same question: “Where are you from?”
And I replied:
“From Iraq”
And right away he gave it to me in the face:
“From Fallujah?”
That’s why when “Hassan Balasim” announced his idea to do this book, 3 years ago, I jumped on the boat, maybe just to say “Fallujah is just a little tiny town with a population of only 10 thousand people, while Iraq is a size of California with a population of 35 million people, 99% of them are not from Fallujah!