Two New Works by Iraqi Writers (Now in English)

Two new works of Iraqi lit—one a collection of poetry, one a book of short stories—have come out this fall from small indie presses in the U.K. (There’s also a novel from Aflame Books, Thirsty River, but I’m hoping it’s at the P.O. waiting for me, so more about that later.)

The Deleted Part is a collection of poems by Adnan al-Sayegh, and The Madman of Freedom Square is a short-story collection by writer-filmmaker Hassan Blasim. They’re both reviewed by Susannah Tarbush here.

Perhaps strangely (for the publisher, in any case), you can read the first—the collection of poems—on the author’s website. It’s uploaded as a PDF.

And there are more reviews of Blasim’s book, The Madman of Freedom Square, on his website. The Complete Review gives his collection a B, which generally means something is worth reading.

On the non-literary, political-science front, I just got an email about this new book, which looks very interesting: Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered.