Iraq +100: stories from a century after the invasion

As Americans, we invaded and wrecked Iraq, so the least we can do is read some Iraqi literature. As editor Hassan Blasim puts it, the Arab world has a dearth of genre literature. There is no Arab Tolkien or Asimov, no living or historical author who links the myths of the Muslim world to a modern retelling, or the present to the future. To paraphrase his introduction, the Arab imagination has been buried by authoritarian politics, religious fundamentalism, and foreign shock therapy. This 2013 collection, a decade after the sack by the latter day Hulagu Khans, Bush and Blair, imagines many futures for Iraq in 2113.

The writers are exceptional, judging by the bios in the back. This is the creme of Iraqi literati, both in Mesopotamia and in exile. For all their literary skills, they are only okay at the art of speculative fiction. The best of the stories have the acid satire of Russian literature. The interesting ones find future peace in Iraq’s history as the cradle of civilization. The average ones gripe about the injustice of occupation and sectarian warfare, and too many, roughly half by my count, fumble with the basic tools of speculative literature, getting so lost in imagination that they forget to add characters, or a plot.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I can’t really recommend it either.